Mover of The Week: Brian Townsend
Shaker of The Week: Patrik Antonius

Each Movers & Shakers issue is packed with a Railbird’s view of the most exciting action in online poker. In this Issue: 88 Minutes, $1,356,947 is now the target to beat, The Pendulum Bankroll, and To Durrrr For.

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88 Minutes

Most entrepreneurially-minded people have the ambition of making (at least) $1m in their lifetime. Seven figures has always been a psychological benchmark. The course of history has shown us that there are various ways to make the big bucks and also, it takes different people different amounts of times to achieve the feat of earning $1m.

Therefore, this week’s ‘Mover’ award goes to Brian Townsend. It took Townsend just 88 minutes to earn a tad over $1.1m. And how did Townsend stack the Benjamin’s so quickly? Answer: an epic heads-up session with Isildur1. This wasn’t any kind of heads up session: this was 1,018 hands of $200/$400 Pot Limit Omaha simultaneously played over four tables, lasting only 88 minutes!
I am not going to regurgitate the entire session for you: my colleague, Patrick Wallace, has given us a nice summary: Sbrugby Scrums Down With Isildur1. I am, however, going to show you my favourite hand of the session: see the hand here.

This hand epitomises PLO: on one side Isildur1 held a monster Ac-As-9d-3c. On the other side, Townsend holding Ah-Qd-9h-7d: The monster hand against a drawing hand. Being ultra aggressive, both players managed to put it all in pre-flop. Townsend flopped two-pair. The Turn and River didn’t help Isildur.  Townsend outgunned the bullets to drag in the $88,399 pot.

Here are some jaw-dropping stats: $1,103,698.50 was the net profit for Townsend at the end of the session. This equates to roughly $12,500 per minute of play, equating to just over $200 PER SECOND of play. Bear in mind, many top lawyers bill out at $200 per hour…

Not a bad showing for Townsend, considering this week he has primarily been playing $25/$50 Pot Limit Omaha. The last time he played a session above this limit, he was relieved of just over $550,000 during a $300/$600 PLO session against none other than Durrrr (This isn’t strictly true: our Mover of The Week did venture into a $50/$100 PLO game, however, he only stuck around for one hand. And don’t worry: we will come on to Durrrr in a jiffy).

$1,356,947 is now the target to beat

Remember the number, folks! This is now the target to beat. It is the largest pot ever recorded in online poker, taken down by none other than Patrik Antonius. A lot of you may be thinking that this should have been the first thing we talked about this week. You are going to be even more disappointed when I inform you that this week’s Shaker of The Week goes to Antonius.

Check the hand out here: In contrast to our previous PLO hand (Isildur1’s made hand vs. Townswend’s drawing hand), this time, Isildur1 had the drawing hand, but, as it turns out, Antonius’ drawing hand was deadlier: it hit the flop perfectly to make a wheel and take down the largest pot in online poker history during his $500/$1,000 PLO session.

So, this begs the question: why is Antonius the Shaker of The Week? Simple: Only Patrik Antonius could pull in the biggest pot in the history of online poker and still end the week down $670,590! (this article was written on Thursday 26/Dec, so, knowing Anotnius, he may claw that back on Friday and Saturday sessions).

The Pendulum Bankroll

On the subject of Isildur1: His bankroll has has been pendulum-like over the last week. At the beginning of the month, he was in negative territory. After picking fights with some of poker’s top dogs including Phil Ivey, Haseeb Qureshi, Patrik Antonius and Tom Dwan to name a few (playing NLHE and PLO), over a period of a couple of weeks, his bankroll went from negative to over $5m.

If you think a week is a long time in politics, you clearly haven’t been watching online high stakes poker: over the last week, Isildur1 has been completely undressed by poker’s top gunners, and he has shed around $3m from his bankroll. Patrick Wallace has another good article on the subject here: Isildur1 Loses $3m In Disastrous Weekend.

His net earnings currently stand at around $1,500,000, this week losing around $2.3m. The PokerTableRatings session indicators are showing that, over the last 56 sessions, Isildur1 has been losing about $40k per session! Are players starting to figure out what the unknown Swede is all about? Or, has it just been a bad week at the office? I am certain that we have not heard the end from this fearless maniac and I am certain we will be talking about Isildur1 next week (and the week after, and the week after that…)

To Durrrr For

Last week, Durrrr was in London playing his Million Dollar Challenge (aka, the ‘I-want-to-show-I-am-the-hottest-up-and-coming-star-on-the-poker-circuit’ tour). The Challenge involved both NLHE and PLO.

First up, he played Marcello Marigliano (who took his seat with a $250k stack). The session was primarily NLHE, however, we were treated to a bit of PLO. In a hyper aggressive game, the end result was a stalemate, with Margliano netting about $22.5k.

Durrrr’s next opponent was Ilari Sahamies. Don’t be fooled in thinking it was a pleasant friendly match: at one point, Durrrr was down over $250k at one point. But we all know PLO is a game of swings, and Durrrr managed to leave the evening with around $70k in profits, making the Durrrr vs Challengers score 1-1.

Next up, Sammy George. Many were predicting poker’s equivalent of the Armageddon. They were not disappointed. George was forced to rebuy early when his Big Slick walked into Durrrr’s Bullets. However, my favourite hand was when Durrrr showed his psycho credentials: moving all in with 7-2 off suit (which hadn’t connected with anything on the flop) against George’s two-pair. Durrrr’s balls of fire paid off – George folded the two pair. Durrrr declared that he didn’t think that he played all that well during the session, which will have some utterly amazed since he walked away from the match with around $750k of George’s hard earned cash.

Result: Durrrr wins the challenge 2-1. No doubt, he will be playing many sessions over the next couple of weeks: PokerTableRatings will be watching to bring you all the latest action.

Tags: Brian Townsend, durrrr, High Stakes, Isildur1, Patrik Antonius, Phil Ivey, Poker Losers, Poker Winners, Tom Dwan

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