Standing at the summit of the tower overlooking the vast expanse of high stakes online poker is Finland’s top marksman, Sami ‘LarsLuzak’ Kelopuro.
At the back end of August, Kelopuro hit the headlines after winning $1.3m playing a Pot-Limit Omaha (PLO) cash game online at PokerStars. Vexed with only impaling online cash game brethren on his white and blue stake, Kelopuro set his sights on becoming the cock of the online multi-table tournament (MTT) world.
He left all the other hens pecking at seeds.
Kelopuro cashed 121 times in tournaments during the month that Earth, Wind and Fire fancy, earning $4.275m in gross profit. The Finn has the GGSeries and World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) to thank for smashing the dam.
14 six-figure scores.
45 five-figure scores.
Eight wins.
Here are a few highlights courtesy of PocketFives.
GGPoker was the arena where Kelopuro caused the most carnage. On Sep 9, he won two GGS events for $157,000 and $458,770 respectively. Then on Sep 14, he binked three tournaments on the same site earning $121,638, $275,344 and $61,924.
His monster month didn’t go unrecognised. Kelopuro won the PocketFives Monthly Leaderboard, tipped over the $10m earnings mark for MTTs, and landed in the World #1 spot for the first time in his illustrious career.
Here are those world rankings.
The PocketFives World Rankings
- Sami ‘LarsLuzak’ Kelopuro
- Patrick ‘pleno1’ Leonard
- Niklas ‘lena900’ Ästedt
- Andras ‘probirs’ Nemeth
- Johannes ‘Greenstone25’ Korsar
The Best of the Rest
There are many ways that one can overtake Kelopuro at the top of the world rankings.
Bribery.
Battery.
Brilliance.
Here are a few peeps choosing Option #3.
PokerStars High Rollers
Ole ‘wizowizo’ Schemion had a productive weekend after laying siege on the PokerStars High Rollers.
The World Poker Tour (WPT) Champions Club member won two top events. In the first, he beat 137-entrants to win the $29,212 first prize in the $1,050 Sunday Supersonic. Benjamin ‘bencb789’ Rolle finished second, and Joris ‘BillLewinsky’ Ruijs finished fourth.
Then Schemion took down the 144-entrant $1,050 Sunday Warm-Up for $30,225. Aliaksei ‘ale6ka’ Boika finished second, Dario ‘Secret_M0d3’ Sammartino, finished third, Alex ‘steakaddict’ Papazian was sixth, and girafganger7’s run ended in eighth.
The winner of PokerStars’ biggest buy-in event of the weekend was Jonathan ‘apestyles’ Van Fleet who defeated Michael ‘mczhang’ Zhang to win the PokerStars $2,100 Sunday High Roller for $38,840. He has now earned more than $10.6m playing online tournaments.
Partypoker High Rollers
Switching from PokerStars to partypoker, and we have nothing but anonymity for you.
The $5,200 The Big Game returned with 119-entrants ensuring they beat the $500,000 guarantee by $95,000, and ‘SleevePatrol’ won the $145,775 first prize. ‘Jizoint’ won the $2,100 Sunday High Roller Gladiator, defeating 176-entrants to claim the $83,000 first prize. ‘Achtungdiekurve’ won the 233-entrant $1,050 Sunday High Roller Masters for $47,508.
GG Poker
Lastly, there were two big winners on GGPoker this weekend. ‘Ravenoustrashdog’ won the 53-entrant $2,500 Sunday Blade for $43,607, and ‘Joeri_van_Heeten’ won the 30-entrant, $5k Sunday Blade for $64,059.
And that’s this week’s virtual rail.