Online poker nicknames – should they be allowed to be changed?

Online poker nicknames are currently like a fingerprint for each online poker player. Once you choose one, you’ll be stuck with it for good. Given that you are not allowed to open several poker accounts at the same poker room, your once chosen nickname will theoretically stick with you for life. This is the reason why most online poker rooms warn players when they create their accounts and they’re about to choose a nickname: pick one that you won’t be ashamed of later, because we will not let you change it. Online poker rooms adopted this inflexible policy for a reason: this way they could keep track of their players’ movements, statistics and rake production in a simple, straightforward manner. Players embraced the idea too. By sticking to one nickname, one could literally build a name for himself in the online poker world, without ever giving out his real identity. Others could browse through his accomplishments which he’d brandish proudly. If you need an example of a person whose nickname made it to the headlines of each and every online poker news site out there, look no further than Isildur1. Part of the appeal of the Swede was the fact that he was a mystery man. No one knew his true identity and speculating on it turned into an entertaining pastime for many. Isildur1’s name proved to be his downfall too though. After they’d analyzed his hand histories and after they’d concocted strategies to combat his playing style, three Cardrunners members (South, Townsend and Hastings) felted him and sent him on a break from the tables, using that advantage.

The incident stirred up a whirlwind of debate in the industry, as a result of which measures were taken by some poker rooms to thwart “data mining”. Cake Poker decided to allow its players to change their nicknames once every week. This carries much further reaching implications than just stopping “data mining” though.

According to many experts, poker is a game in which it is essential to know who you’re playing against. Knowing your opponent will directly affect your decisions, thus allowing players to change their nicknames will rob their adversaries of a valuable edge. I’d have to disagree with this to a certain degree at least. A poker game begins the second you sit down to the table. It’s the same in live poker. Unless you’re one of the 50-100 (insert any number you see fit here) players known world over, nobody will know you until you start playing. Basically the same happens in the online poker room. You sit down and the guy who’s better at reading his opponent while selling his table image, is the more skilled player and he’ll probably enjoy a (fair) advantage because of that. Anything that happens off that table is not the poker room’s responsibility, and as such, whether it’s fair or not shouldn’t even come up – it should never be allowed to influence the game in any way to begin with.

It’s also been said that the option to change nicknames will allow skilled players to descend to lower levels and to take advantage of beginners. I don’t really see a problem with this…It shouldn’t matter who you are. If you’re a better player than your opponent than you should probably take his stack, it’d be the right thing to do. In addition to this, the guys playing at the nosebleed tables do not play there because they’re forced to do it. They play there because that’s where they reckon they can make the biggest profits and the most money, so the fact that they’re anonymous wouldn’t prevent them from staying at those tables. Sometimes, “name” pros who are hit badly do descend to the lower limits to rebuild their bankrolls, but as soon as they do, they dart right back to the nosebleed tables. I don’t think this would change one bit if nickname change was to be allowed.
One point I do have to fully agree with though, is that cheaters would be more difficult to identify and to eventually apprehend if they were allowed to switch their nicknames around. Russ Hamilton would probably still be frolicking around and enjoying the dough made off his unsuspecting victims, though we shouldn’t forget that he could probably have been tracked through the accounts he used.

Besides the naysayers, there are also experts who welcome the changes proposed (and already implemented) by Cake Poker. According to their reasoning, online poker has been slowly but surely turning into a huge data mining operation, in which the player doing more data mining research would have the advantage over an otherwise more skilled opponent. By allowing internet poker players to sink back into anonymity, the game would be purified of data mining and the focus would shift back from hand history analysis to actual game skills. Reading players and exploiting your table image are actual poker skills, but what good does it do to you that you’re much better at these things, if player X pulls a data sheet on you and knows exactly what percentage of your top hands you raise preflop?

What about the safe haven that this policy of nickname changing would offer cheaters like Hamilton? If we’re going down this road, I think it would be fair to note that Hamilton and his partners changed their accounts as well as their nicknames during their escapades. With the policy currently adopted by Cake Poker, player accounts would remain untouched and only the nicknames would change. Possible cheaters could be tracked down based on their accounts.

2009’s most remarkable poker stories part 5

What 2009 retrospective would be complete without taking a proper look at the biggest online poker winners and losers of the year? None I guess, so here we go. Let’s look at the winners first, and then the losers.
Patrik Antonius may be nearly $1 million down in the durrrr challenge, but financial problems are not likely to plague the Finnish pro any time soon. Not after having pocketed $8.9 million in winnings last year. Hell, with that sort of ammo under his belt, I doubt it he has any sort of jitters about losing the durrrr challenge altogether.

A former model and professional tennis player, Antonius first made waves at Full Tilt Poker in 2007, the first year when he made the list of the top 10 biggest winners. He pocketed $1.3 million then, and followed it up with a similar performance in 2008, with the insignificant difference that he pulled it off as a “red” Full Tilt pro that time around. 2009 was a different sort of thing altogether. In January alone, Antonius won $2 million and things would only get better from there on.
Despite the fact that the durrrr challenge didn’t exactly go as planned for him (he still stands a pretty good chance to turn things around though), he got his hands on Isildur1 who dropped massive amounts of money to him. Basically, whatever he won from Dwan he dropped to Antonius, so in the end it was Dwan’s dough channeled Antonius’ way trough the mystery Swede.

Phil Ivey is a quiet money making machine. He doesn’t make a whole lot of noise about anything. He just sits there, stares opponents down and wins. In 2007, he finished with a $1.9 million profit. 2008 meant a massive $7.3 million upswing for him. In 2009, he didn’t make first place but he just narrowly missed it. Despite a downswing in the spring, No Home Jerome managed to get his act together and he eventually finished the year with a $6.3 million profit. Needless to say, the bulk of that money came off Isildur1, whom he managed to fleece nicely on a few occasions.
If one adds to that the money won with the two WSOP bracelets he scored and the Big Dance final table finish, Ivey may yet prove to be the biggest winner after all.

Brian Hastings comes in on a controversial 3rd place. Why controversial? You may ask… why, because of the way he got there of course. Hastings began the year playing mostly against Gus Hansen. One would think that by the way the Great Dane was dropping money left and right he did well, but it wasn’t exactly so. As a matter of fact, Hastings spent most of the year under the red line, and it wasn’t till August that he managed to move above it. Even then, his winnings were meager (compared to his peers of course) but then came a single session against Isildur1 in which the Cardrunners pro won no less than $4.2 million. Besides setting a record for the biggest online poker session ever, Hastings pretty much ended Isildur1’s nosebleed stakes escapade at Full Tilt Poker.
Though the win did thrust him into 3rd place on the top earners list, it remains a controversial one. In a spell of honesty, Hastings admitted that his fellow Cardrunners pros, Brian Townsend and Cole South bought, shared and analyzed Isildur1’s hand statistics and shared their findings with him to help him achieve the deed.

Ashton Griffin’s story of 2009 was a similarly swing-ridden one. He began the year broke, but around July, his profits graph finally shot almost straight up. Having been forced to get a stake to jump back into action, Griffin won prop bets and ground his way right back up the rankings to finish with more than $3.5 million above the red line at the end of the year.

Ilari Sahamies is in a rather surprising 5th place on our most profitable players of 2009 list. The reason I’m saying “surprising” is that this guy is one of the craziest high stakes gamblers out there. He plays drunk, he has little consideration for money and even less respect for the guys he’s playing. Despite all that though, he never fell below the red line in 2009. He scored nearly $2 million in profits during the first 3 months of the year, only to give almost all of it back in April. May marked the start of another upward trend for him and it continued right till the beginning of December when he hit nearly $7 million in profits. Needless to say, his biggest upswing was due to a few extremely profitable sessions he had against Isildur1. He would’ve finished higher up on the list, had he not dropped a massive amount of his winnings on the home stretch.

Now on to the losers.
The 5th biggest loser of the year was Isildur1. It’s pretty surprising he didn’t end up with the biggest loss after the massive hits he’d endured lately, but one needs to keep in mind that for a while he was winning big.
I’m not going to go into details on this one, as you probably know all about Isildur1’s antics, even if the only thing you ever read about him was this very article. The bottom line is, he finished a little over $2 million under the red line, going effectively busto and disappearing off the high stakes scene.

4th on the losers’ list is David Benyamine. The funny thing about the Frenchman is that he sunk this low after he’d been the 4th most profitable player in 2008. Benyamine’s losses started in January, he bounced back a little around March and then dropped straight down to a little less than $3 million in losses till the end of the year.

2009’s most remarkable poker stories part 4

Isildur1. One word, one nickname: it’s all that’s known about the player who took Full Tilt Poker and the high stakes online poker community completely by surprise in 2009. If there was a story I’d have to appoint as the top story of the year, Isildur1’s short stint at the nosebleed tables would probably be it. This move induced so many changes in the industry it’s difficult to even begin to assess its overall impact.

It was in the latter part of 2009 that an unidentified Swedish player hit the high stakes at Full Tilt Poker. All people knew about Isildur1 was that he was Swedish and that – judging by his playing style – he was probably young. On top of being just aggressive, this guy was crazy too. He gambled without any sort of concern for the fabulous sums he was turning over, and nothing could scare or deter him. He was a never before seen scourge at the high stakes tables, and – at least in the beginning – he was winning big. He changed online cash games forever and he redefined the limits of online poker in general.

Isildur1 first appeared at Full Tilt Poker near the end of September. He played ring games, but got tired of that relatively fast and he decided to focus on heads-up cash games instead. That seemed to work better for him, and soon he was able to challenge “name” pros. His first truly significant heads-up match occurred at the $50/$100 stakes, against Haseeb Quareshi. That move represented a significant progress from the $25/$50 stakes where he had begun his heads-up activity. The match against Quareshi was a huge success for the Swede: he took about $500,000 from the internet pro, setting the foundation of a bankroll which would allow him to climb further up the stakes.

While he preferred to play NL Holdem, Isildur1 took on Harry Kacza next, at the $100/$200 PLO tables. Cole South and Brian Townsend marked the next stops for Isildur1 whose ascent continued. The South and Townsend matches saw him move to the $200/$400 and the $300/$600 stakes respectively. By that time, the nosebleed stakes community began to view the Swede as a fish who could potentially drop money their way. Caught up in a stalemate on the durrrr challenge tables and generally in bad need of money, Dwan figured he’d get in on the action provided by Isildur1. He made the mistake of taking him on at the NL Holdem tables instead of the PLO ones though.
The carnage began at the $300/$600 tables, then moved on to the $500/$1,000 ones. It only took Isildur1 3-4 days to relieve Dwan of a massive $3 million, which left the New Jersey Wonderkid seriously crippled. This moment represented the peak of Isildur1’s 2009 nosebleed stakes performance. With Dwan’s bankroll left in tatters, Isildur1 took aim at Phil Ivey, Ilari Sahamies and Patrik Antonius. Obviously, it was a huge mistake of him not to take the money won off Dwan and disappear into the sunset with it, because he began to lose against these three players.

He dropped almost 3 million to Antonius, then 2 millions more. He lost around 2 million to Phil Ivey too, and Sahamies made some money off him as well.
It was during these sessions that things really got out of control and records began to fall. The largest ever online poker pot clocked in at a staggering $1.3 million, forever altering the scene of high stakes cash games.

Another noteworthy thing was that all these huge record-breaking pots came at PLO tables. Thus, Isildur1’s actions have cemented PLO as the absolute king of ultra high stakes, knocking NL Holdem off a long standing pedestal.
Nov 24th marked the beginning of the end for the mystery Swede. On that day, he lost $1.5 million to Sahamies and dropped a further $1.1 million to Brian Townsend. It all happened right after he took a $1.1 million pot from Phil Ivey which looked like it was going to turn the tide in his favor again. His comeback nipped in the bud, the Swede began to slip. Once a proud $7 million above the line, he was now about $1.2 million under it. Still though, it wasn’t curtains time for Isildur1 yet. He bounced back in a spectacular fashion on December 6th and 7th, having embarked on a recoup crusade. His victims included Tom Dwan whom he hit again for half a million dollars, Brian Townsend ($1 million) and Ilari Sahamies, whom he took for $2 million.

Just when things were beginning to look up again, a relative unknown, Brian Hastings popped up on the scene. In a rather surprising (or even suspicious) manner, Isildur1 dropped $4.2 million to the Cardrunners pro over a single session, thus setting a new record for the biggest amount of money changing hands over a single online session. It later turned out that those who found the deed suspicious were at least partly right: Hastings had benefited from hand histories built and bought by Townsend and South, and from the analysis Townsend had done regarding Isildur1’s playing style.
Following an overly honest statement by Hastings, the online poker world exploded into controversy: could what the three Cardrunners guys had done be cataloged as collusion? The controversy still rages on and even though the chances of Isildur1 recovering any of his money looks remote, the waves have still not set.

Following the Brian Hastings catastrophe, Isildur1 still had some funds left in his Full Tilt Account. Apparently still on a tilt, he dropped the last of his chips to Townsend and South who mopped up in Hasting’s wake a few days later. It was thus that the Isildur1 saga reached an unfortunate end. The incident which resulted in Isildur1’s massive loss to Hastings, cost Brian Townsend his red pro status for a month. Whether or not the Cardrunners guys are guilty of collusion is debatable, one thing is certain though: their actions have definitely cast a dark shadow over Full Tilt’s high stakes tables where pros apparently join forces against unsuspecting newcomers.

2009’s most significant poker stories part 3

My 2009 retrospective continues with the top online poker pots of the year, and the Isildur1stint. Because I already discussed pot #5 of the top 5 in a previous post, I’ll continue with the 4th most outrageous pot of the year: a $832,940 monster, that went down between Phil Ivey and Isildur1.
This whooper saw Isildur1 start on a $415,970 stack against Ivey’s 621,401. Isildur1 had 6d,6h,3h,3s. Ivey had As, Qc, 7s,3c in the pocket. This time, the preflop action pushed the bar all the way to $27,000. Ivey made the call to see the flop fall Ac,6c,4s to give Isildur1 a set. That was all the Swede needed to open his can of whoop-ass and he immediately fired out a $42,000 bet. Ivey had top pair but also straight and flush draws, which were enough to prompt him to shove all-in. Isildur1 made the call. The Jd which fell on the turn didn’t forward Ivey’s case, but the Kc on the river hit him dead on for a flush and gave him the pot.

The third biggest pot of the year (and of online poker history) was an all-Scandinavian affair. Patrik Antonius took on Isildur1 for this baby, which grew into an $878,959 monster by the end of the hand. Antonius started the hand on a $438,479 stack, with Ah,Qc,9s,6h in his pocket. Isildur1 had $449,994 and As,Ks,Qd,10h in the pocket. The hand kicked off with a $3,000 raise by Isildur1 which Antonius flat called, so the two went on to see a flop of Qs,7h,5h. Both players flopped top pair, and Isildur1 immediately went for a $5,000 continuation bet. Antonius had draws on top of the top pair though, so he made it $21,000 in response to Isildur1’s bet. The Swede made the call and the Ad landed on the turn. This card was the one that sparked the all-ins, so the 8d on the river found both players neck-deep in the hand. That river card filled up Antonius’ 9 high straight though, so the monster pot ended up on his side of the table.

The second largest pot of 2009 broke the $1 million mark. Things were pretty much out of control for Isildur1 by then, and Phil Ivey knew all too well how to take advantage of the situation. Unfortunately though, this hand did not go his way. Ivey started out with a $560k stack against Isildur1’s $637k one. Isildur1 had K,K, 5, 4 and Ivey never showed so it’s not clear what he had had.
The two players fattened the pot to $27,000 before they even considered to see the flop. The flop fell K,J,J hitting Isildur1 dead on for a boat. Both players checked the flop and a 10d came on the turn. Isildur1 sprung the trap by checking and Ivey fired out $41k. All hell broke loose on the 5d which fell on the river, and eventually the chips went all into the middle. Ivey mucked when Isildur1 showed down his boat to take down the $1,127,955 pot, so we’ll never know what No Home Jerome had there.

The biggest, meanest and most spectacular pot of 2009 was a $1,356,947 one, fought over by Isildur1 and Patrik Antonius, with the Finn walking away with the money when the dust settled. This pot definitely marked the beginning of the end for the mystery Swede, as he’d dropped $2.1 million that night to Antonius and $1.2 million to Ivey. The two players locked horns in what would become a record breaking pot – Antonius holding A,K,K,3 on a $1.2 million stack and Isildur1 holding 9,8,7,6 on a $677k stack.
The preflop action promised a lot from the get go. The two players stuffed a combined $162,000 into the pot before the flop even fell. The 5,4,2 flop gave Antonius a wheel and sparked further action: the Finn first made it $91,000 and as Isildur1 took that to $435,000, Antonius shoved all-in, and the Swede made the call. The 5h landed on the turn to increase Antonius’ odds against Isildur1’s higher straight draw, and the 9c which landed on the river sealed the deal for good.
This monster remains the largest ever online poker pot played in the history of the game, and with Isildur1 taking an indefinite breather, chances are it will be the mark to beat for quite some time to come.

As you can see, all top 5 pots of the year were PL Omaha ones. Isildur1 was admittedly as NL Holdem specialist and he repeatedly complained to Antonius about having to take him on at PLO tables only. That comes to show you that these high stakes online poker professionals are shrewd operators indeed. The reason why Antonius let a pot escalate in this fashion was that he knew he held an edge over his opponent at this game. The reason I’m saying that this record breaking baby is likely to be the top of the pile for some time to come is that it only came to be thanks to Isildur1 and his style of play. Antonius would probably not have let things get out of control quite this way, had he played another of the Full Tilt nosebleed regulars. Isildur1 is gone now though, and unless he makes some sort of a comeback, the catalyst for such other-worldly online poker pots will simply not exist.
Phil Ivey had obviously jumped on the bandwagon too, and he took too a share of the Swede’s bankroll before Hastings, Townsend and Cole finished him off for good.

2009’s most significant poker stories part 2

The countdown of the best and most entertaining poker stories of 2009 continues in this post with the durrrr challenge and the top 5 poker pots of the year.
For those who may not be in the know, “durrrr” is Tom Dwan’s online poker moniker. The durrrr challenge was launched by Dwan in February 2009, during a time in which nosebleed stakes action was relatively scarce at Full Tilt Poker. According to experts, the sole goal of the challenge was to generate high stakes action for the young American, as he truly felt he had an edge over just about anyone at PL Omaha. The terms of the challenge were the following: everyone, except Dwan’s friend and fellow nosebleed stakes online poker pro, Phil Galfond, could take him up on it. The participants were to play 50 thousand poker hands at 4 separate heads-up PLO or NL Holdem tables, dubbed the challenge tables. The minimum stakes would be $200/$400, so obviously Dwan knew that while the terms specified that everyone could take him up on the challenge, only a few people in the world would really be in the market for it.

If, at the end of the 50,000 challenge hands, his opponent was a single dollar up on him, Dwan would pay him a staggering $1.5 million. If Dwan was up on his opponent, he would receive $500k. All the money that changed hands during the challenge would remain at the person who won it, so the challenge prize would be on top of it.
The favorable odds worked like a magnet for the top pros, and soon they were lining up to take Dwan on. Patrik Antonius was the first to express his willingness to get rolling, as David Benyamine and Phil Ivey picked up the gauntlet too. The whole undertaking looked like it was going to be a perfect stunt to draw more railbirds and players to the online tables. It did indeed have the makings of a perfect gig until it actually got underway. The frequency and the length of the various challenge sessions the two players put in though soon made it obvious it was going to be a crawl rather than a sprint to the finish.

The very first durrrr challenge session happened on February 18th 2009, and it saw 1,541 hands logged, with Dwan finishing more than $130k above the red line. The action remained balanced till about the 12,000th hand when Antonius went on a winning spree and opened up a $500k lead on Dwan. Dwan rebounded soon afterwards though and the tide gradually turned his way. June 19th marked the peak of Dwan’s domination. That day, the New Jersey Wonderkid had a $1.2 million lead over Antonius at one point. He did give some of that lead back though so the session ended with him up $726,000.

Following that turning point, the challenge sessions became less and less frequent. Isildur1’s appearance on the high stakes scene in August threatened to completely disrupt durrrr challenge sessions. Fresh on the trail of the fish, both Dwan and Antonius began to stalk Isildur1 to try to relieve him of his bankroll. That venture pretty much wrecked Dwan’s bankroll though, as he dropped around $3 million to the mystery Swede over a mere 3 days. Still reeling from the beating, durrrr was obviously not looking to log any challenge hands against Antonius. The Finn wasn’t too eager to hit the challenge tables either, as opposed to Dwan, he was winning nicely against Isildur1.
Isildur1’s bust-out left Dwan in a huge hole, working to rebuild his bankroll on lower stakes.
A total of 29,764 hands have been completed over 45 challenge sessions, which leaves the gig barely past the half-way mark. Despite the fact that much of the railbird interest generated by the initial hype has by now subsided, people still take the challenge tables by assault whenever they see something stirring there.

Isildur1’s arrival at the top of the nosebleed stakes at Full Tilt poker stirred the waters up quite a bit in the high stakes community. The Swede appeared unstoppable and his playing style meant that the record set for the largest ever online poker pot by Di Dang and Tom Dwan ($723,038) would soon fall. Sure enough, before his epic busto, the Swede pulverized that record no fewer than a dozen times. So big was his influence on the high stakes scene that he was involved in every single, larger-than-750K online poker pot ever played.

2009 hasn’t just marked Isildur1’s emergence in Tom Dwan’s place as the new record boy, it marked PLO’s emergence over NL Holdem as the preferred roaming grounds of true high stakes heavyweights. Nothing describes that situation better than the monster pot counts of the two poker variants. Of the 20 largest online poker pots, only three are currently NL Holdem ones, and the way things are shaping up, they too may soon be pushed off the list by PLO hands.
Let us take a look at some of the most impressive online poker pots of 2009 though.

5th place goes to a $827,960 whooper played for by Phil Ivey and Isildur1. Having caught the scent of a bleeding fish, Ivey was all over the Swede at the time and he did indeed make a handsome profit off him, however this pot wasn’t going to end up in his pockets.
Ivey was in the button, on a $661,938 stack, holding 10c,8c,7s,3s. Isildur1 had $412,980 and held Qh,Jh,10d, 9c. The preflop action saw the bar pushed to $9,000 before Ivey’s call allowed the flop to be dealt. 9s, 6s, 2h fell on the board giving Ivey an open ended straight draw and Isildur1 a top pair.
Working his advantage, Isildur1 fired out a $15,000 bet, which got called by Ivey. The 8d fell on the turn, and Ivey took the driver’s seat with a straight. That same card however offered Isildur1 a straight draw too. One bet led to another, and it all ended up with Isildur1 showing it all-in and getting called by Ivey. The 7c on the turn filled up Isildur1’s higher straight though and gave him the record breaking pot
To be continued…