Pro Spotlight: Mustapha Kanit
8 years ago
27 Mar
Some players are considered to be the best in the world because of their tournament winnings, others because of their high-stakes online escapades, others still because they are fan favourites or receive their peer’s blessing.
The real test, of course, is when you combine all these things and more, and that’s where Mustapha Kanit can claim to be the best poker player of the modern generation.
Not that the relatively quiet and mild-mannered Clark Kent of the poker world would ever claim this himself, so we’ll have to do it for him.
No rest for the wicked or the talented
The Italian sensation turned 25 at the end of January and scooped over $1million in the weeks surrounding his birthday by placing 4th spot in the Super-High Roller PCA $100K event, and by taking down the €25K High Roller at EPT12 in Dublin just last month.
You might imagine he’d ease off a bit and enjoy his winnings, do what most of the young poker pros do and live it up a bit. Not Mustapha. Barely two weeks after his Dublin triumph he was online and winning the Sunday Millions on PokerStars, picking up $177,229.79 for his trouble.
The previous week he took down the $215 Sunday Supersonic, a hyper-turbo version of the same event – another $47,999.89 in his back pocket and another notch on his belt.
Massive live wins, equally huge online victories and then…he gets picked first in the GPL draft. His peers know exactly what this young man is capable of.
The Online wizard
Kanit’s primary online moniker – ‘Lasagnaaammm’ on PokerStars – shot to prominence when he lifted almost $¼ million for 4th place in a $10K. Almost exactly two years ago to the day, he again doubled his earnings in one fell swoop. A superb accomplishment to do this both online and in the brick-and-mortar worlds, but for Mustapha it was just the beginning of a remarkable run.
Within six months, the online wizard would be regularly picking up such prizes, and for anyone still thinking it was a case of ‘running hot’ by the Italian poker prodigy, consider the probability of cashing over 1100 times in four years. That would be a machine-like production line of poker cash-outs, and Kanit’s play is anything but machine-like.
He has a hyper-aggressive approach to the game – no doubt one of the reasons that ‘lucky’ appears next to his names on forums – but as anyone who has played the game knows, such aggression places opponents in extremely difficult situations. Mistakes start to appear, and the fearlessness of youth is always willing to pounce on frailty.
His amazing online results saw poker forums ablaze with discussions late last year. ‘Is he real?’ was the title of one thread – no doubt updated after his recent successes.
Check out these scores in the past year:
- 3rd in a WCOOP 10k for $400k
- 1st in Sunday 500: $65k
- 2nd in Sunday 109 rebuy: $46k
- 2 more WCOOP cashes for over $440k
- Ships FTOPS Main Event: $239k
- Ships SCOOP 2K Turbo: $376k
- Ships Scoop 10k/hardest online MTT: $1.3 million
Add everything together and you get a whopping $4,436,272, without leaving the comfort of his own room. When he does venture out, of course, things don’t get any easier for his opponents.
A real Live wire
Kanit’s aggressive-style is perfectly suited to the live tournament scene, although he admits to preferring the virtual felt.
Maybe things are a little better for me when I play online”, he stated in an interview with Pokernews last year, adding “I believe this happens because I have studied the online game for much longer and because I have had some really incredible results there. Let's put it this way, if I had to choose, I would probably choose online poker.”
Well, he may well feel this way, but playing live has brought the Italian - who splits his time between Malta and London – more money and fame. Check out these cashes form the last few years alone…
- 4th $25,500 High Roller, PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) $492,600
- 1st AU$1,100 NLHE, Aussie Millions $173,517
- 1st AU$1,100 NLHE Six-Max, Aussie Millions $90,698
- 5th $1,500 NLHE, WSOP $117,079
- 5th $1,500 NLHE Monster Stack, WSOP $128,862
- 1st €50,000 NLHE Super High Roller EPT Grand Final €936,500
- 1st €10,300 NLHE High Roller EPT Barcelona €738,759
- 3rd €25,600 NLHE High Roller 2015 WSOP Europe €227,145
- 4th $100,000 NLHE Super High Roller at the 2016 PCA $596,360
- 1st €25,700 NLHE High Roller at the 2016 EPT Dublin €501,640
2014
2015
2016
Again adding it all up gives you a ridiculous figure for a young man, some $6,065,335 in live earnings over seven years, and that’s including his tear or two of learning the live tournament game.
No fear - only respect!
This modern-day approach to poker, where the young aggressively try to ‘feed off the old’, thankfully doesn’t cross over into Mustapha’s personality. Playing live, he is rarely without a genuinely friendly smile – and in interviews he comes across as a warm, thoughtful, and respectful individual.
When his results started to be counted in the millions of $, it would be easy for the young man to go off the rails, but Kanit’s philosophy was simply to keep playing and enjoying the game, learning from the painful defeats and staying grounded after the massive wins.
“There may be occasions where my game might be the best one out there, and I promise you that I am working very hard to become a better player”, was his response when asked in a PokerNews interview about his status as ‘the best tournament player in the world’.
He continued:
Obviously, it feels great to hear that someone thinks you are the best at what you do, but I still have many things to learn from a lot of players”, reminding the poker world at the same time that it was “no longer 2004 when there was only Phil Ivey and the rest were a bunch of TAG players who barely knew the rules of the game. It's 2015 now, and there's a solid group of good players out there”.
Peer reviews
The casual poker fan may not know Kanit, but his peers most certainly do – as does anyone at all who follows poker closely. There are thousands of pro players out there, but only Kanit was a sure 1st pick for the GPL, and in fact turned out to be the very first person chosen by fellow Italian Max Pescatori. The other managers would likely have been cursing their luck.
He’s doing something that no one has really done ever,” said Pescatori recently. “The last two years have been unbelievable. He’s on the run of a lifetime- you don’t know when he will stop. I thought about Jason Mercier but then last week Kanit won another $25k.”
In a sign that Kanit has come out of his younger, more shy days, usatoday.com writer describes him as “known for his eccentric personality, distinctive look, and out-of-the-box wardrobe. All of these factors played into Pescatori’s mind when selecting the 25-year old.”
He’s outspoken,” explained the Italian team manager. “He’s doing all the right things a top player should. Not only does he play well, he is marketing himself: promoting silly things like going to the desert and riding dune buggies.”
Money and Motivation
“I found my motivation inside myself. I love competition and I love tournaments. I think I have a talent and I believe it would be a mistake to waste it,” was his response to Pokernews last year, shortly after lifting the Super High Roller event in Monte Carlo for $1m, the SCOOP Main Event for $1.3m, and in the FTOPS Main Event (for a measly $239,000!).
The future
Whether Kanit can continue to find this inner motivation over the next decade remains to be seen. If he can, and the results match or exceed what he has achieved to-date, the young Italian has the opportunity to join the likes of Phil Ivey and Daniel Negreanu at the very top of the poker world.
Comments
You need to be logged in to post a new comment