Phil Ivey Continues Long Online Poker DownswingPoker Pro Loses Roughly $3.7 Million This Year |
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It wasn’t long ago when Phil Ivey seemed nearly unstoppable on the Internet. However, the 39-year-old poker pro lost roughly $3.7 million in 2015, the most in the online poker world.
Since assuming his “Polarizing” screen name on Full Tilt in late 2012, Ivey has dropped $6.3 million, $1.25 million of which came this year. The rest of Ivey’s 2015 losses came under his “RaiseOnce” screen name on PokerStars. Between his two accounts, Ivey played roughly 160,000 hands in 2015.
Fortunately for the 10-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner, live tournaments were able to offset some of those losses. Ivey won $1.7 million in tournaments in 2015, which brings his lifetime tournament earnings to nearly $23 million.
Despite losing the most out of anyone online in 2015, Ivey was the winner of the year’s largest no-limit hold’em hand, which was the sixth largest hand of the year overall. Ivey scooped the pot worth nearly $300,000 in late May at $200-$400 no-limit hold’em. It was a cooler situation.
Ivey had the button and was holding the 9
7
. He opened to $900, the small blind folded, and unknown account “OtB_RedBaron” three-bet to $3,640 from the big blind. Ivey made the call.
The flop fell Q
8 6
, and Ivey’s opponent fired $2,300. Ivey, sitting with roughly $145,000, made the call. The 5 hit the turn, giving Ivey the nuts. OtB_RedBaron bet again, this time $10,300. Ivey decided to slow play his hand and just called. The river was the 10, and Ivey’s opponent bet $27,000. Ivey shoved for just under $132,000 in total. His opponent, who had him covered, called with the Q Q for top set.
The hand was of no help to Ivey during that week of play, as he dropped another large six-figure sum.
When Ivey was playing under this real name on Full Tilt, he was a $19.24 million winner over 319,000 hands. He rarely went on an extended downswing between 2006 and 2011.
Thanks to Ivey’s losses over the past three years, Patrik Antonius is online poker’s all-time money earner with roughly $15.5 million in winnings. Ivey’s lifetime online poker winnings are now under $10.5 million. That’s not that much more than what the Borgata in Atlantic City wants back from Ivey. The casino and Ivey traded barbs in 2015 as the edge-sorting case continued to play out in court.
Despite the downswing and the edge-sorting scandals, Ivey is a near lock for the Poker Hall of Fame in 2016, the first year in which he is eligible. Fellow poker pro Daniel Negreanu was the last person to be inducted in their first year of eligibility.
Dan “jungleman12” Cates has nearly $11.1 million in lifetime earnings and is second behind Antonius now. Though, Cates did lose more than $300,000 in 2015. The Maryland native’s last losing year was in 2009, when he lost $450,000. His down year hasn’t come at the best of times. Cates said back in August that he lost $5 million in a single live poker session.
For the first time ever, Viktor “Isildur1” Blom was a calendar year’s biggest winner. Though he lost roughly $1.4 million on Full Tilt, Blom was in the black more than $2 million overall in 2015 thanks to crushing the high-stakes on PokerStars. The Swede played roughly 250,000 hands on PokerStars.
Many of the game’s top pros have opted out of having their long-term results tracked, so an official list of the year’s biggest winners and losers isn’t possible.
With that said, other poker pros who we know had strong performances were Ben “Sauce1234” Sulsky ($1.1 million), “bbvisbadforme” ($965,000), Jens “Jeans89” Kyllönen ($870,000), and Isaac “luvtheWNBA” Haxton ($340,000). Other big losers on the year include “Jaqueline” (-$1.1 million), Ilari “Ilari FIN” Sahamies (-$620,000), Phil “OMGClayAiken Galfond (-$470,000), Jason Mercier (-$430,000), Mikael “ChaoRen160” Thuritz (-$410,000), Sam “tr1cky7” Trickett (-$260,000) and Jean-Robert Bellande (-$250,000).
Figures courtesy of HighstakesDB
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