Phil Ivey, Poker’s Biggest Loser In 2015

8 years ago
Phil Ivey is the 2015 Biggest Poker Loser
16:36
29 Dec

No More Profits For Phil Ivey, Everyone’s Solid

He used to bring fear whenever he sat down at an online poker table. He used to crush everyone standing in his way. He used to dominate the highest stakes in poker. Not anymore though! From the biggest online winner at the cash tables in 2008, the legend Phil Ivey has morphed into the biggest online loser in 2015.

According to HighStakesDB, Ivey lost a combined $3,731,352 on PokerStars and Full Tilt in 2015, leading the online poker losers leaderboard by a wide margin. Contrast this to seven years ago when he stormed his way through his opposition winning over $7.3 million on the online felt the second highest one-year upswing in the history of the game. He could also have been the number one in 2009 also (+$6.33 million) if not for Patrik Antonius’ epic win versus ‘Isildur1.’ Those times however are long gone and Ivey now faces a different challenge away from the game he had the most success with: No-Limit Texas Hold’Em.


Omaha and Mixed Games Brought Ivey His Downfall

This year, No Home Jerome played only 2,515 hands at the Hold’Em tables which is less than 2% of his total hands played in the last 12 months (158,763). This comes as no surprise for any poker enthusiast as we all know the Hold’Em high stakes games are more or less depleted. The action in the last several years has moved to the more variance-friendly games where the edges are much smaller than in NLHE.

Pot Limit Omaha is one such game and Phil Ivey experienced it the hard way. Under his screename ‘RaiseOnce’ on PokerStars, he played 25,633 hands at the PLO tables and lost $1,954,816 in the process. His real grind though in 2015 happened at the 8-Game tables. As ‘RaiseOnce’ he played 61,831 hands losing $406,376. Before the Full Tilt changeover in the summer, he also played under his FT screename ‘Polarizing’ - 14,496 hands. He had a harder time though giving up $1,031,055.

Overall, ‘RaiseOnce’ lost $2,481,266 in 126,026 hands good for first place in the 2015 cash losers’ leaderboard while ‘Polarizing’ lost $1,250,806 in 23,737 hands - third in that leaderboard. Between those two Iveys stands Full Tilt user ‘Isildur1’ aka Viktor Blom who finished his FT affair with a $1,367,244 downswing. Jean-Robert ‘Jaqueline’ Bellande completes the seven-figure online losers with a not-so-worthy number of -$1,139,115.


Online Losers in 2015 (Known Poker Players) - Full Tilt + PokerStars

  1. Phil Ivey-$3,731,352
  2. Jean-Robert Bellande-$1,389,603
  3. Phil Galfond -$660,380
  4. lari Sahamies -$467,023
  5. Sam Trickett -$465,581
  6. Jason Mercier -$431,499


What About Poker’s Biggest Winners In 2015?

If you are wondering what happened to Viktor Blom, well you’re about to find out because he’s in fact number one in the online poker winners’ list. Yes, he DID lose over $1.36 million on Full Tilt but he had quite an end of the year on PokerStars. Under the same screenname as on FT, ‘Isildur1’ crushed the PokerStars tables in the last five months. He won there $3,497,527 in 2015 in almost 250,000 hands.

Overall, if we count the FT downswing, Blom is the biggest winner of 2015 with a profit of $2,130,283 - and we aren’t taking into consideration the PLO profits he allegedly made on the Microgaming Poker Network.


Blom made most of his cash at the mixed-games tables winning $1,245,620 on both FT and PS. He played almost 100,000 PLO hands and won only $192,896. He DID have major swings though at Omaha being down almost $1.7 million before Full Tilt closed the nosebleed stakes. The change of scenery from Full Tilt to PokerStars was a very good move as he recovered well in the last five months cashing in over $1.86 million.

The other seven-figure winning poker player in 2015, besides ‘Isildur1’ is Ben ‘sauce’ Sulsky. Sulsky won a combined $1,152,984 on FT and PS while playing over 100,000 hands, most of them at the PLO and mixed-games tables. Third overall and second by screenname is unknown ‘bbvisbadforme’ with a 2015 profit of $965,770.


Online Winners in 2015 (Known Poker Players) - Full Tilt + PokerStars

  1. Viktor Blom+$2,130,283
  2. Ben Sulsky+$1,152,984
  3. Jens Kyllönen +$882,178
  4. Mikael Thuritz +$286,772
  5. Daniel Cates +$183,474
  6. Isaac Haxton +$147,888

Both winning and losing lists are relative since there are several top poker players who opted out from the HighStakesDB long-term results tracking. This includes players like PLO expert Ben Tollerene or 2-7 Triple Draw God Niklas ‘ragen70’ Heinecker.


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Florian is a freelance journalist and avid poker player with a strong passion to create unique and appealing stories.He is an experienced researcher on various topics, from business and the financial markets to psychology and the gambling industry.He blogs at Florianghe.com.Read more

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