Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies

Ilari Sahamies, also well known by his online username ‘Ziigmund’ is a Finnish high stakes poker player. Born 1983 in Helsinki, Sahamies was competitive from an early age competing in football, wrestling, and even diving. It was billiards however that Sahamies truly excelled at, winning the Finnish Junior Championships twice. Sahamies met fellow poker pro Patrik Antonius at a local billiards hall, with the two becoming friends and both became interested in poker, playing home games regularly as teenagers.

After graduating from high school Sahamies regularly played the $5,$5 pot limit Omaha game in Helsinki Casino, learning more about the game and building up his bankroll.

In 2003 Sahamies discovered online poker, and began playing both no limit Hold-em and pot limit Omaha cash games. Sahamies was aggressive with his bankroll management, moving up in stakes after earning just a few buy-ins, leading him to go broke multiple times, though he always managed to run his bankroll back up.

Sahamies joined Full-Tilt in 2006, creating his now famous username ‘Ziigmund’. He quickly became a regular in the highest stakes available on the site, playing against players such as Tom Dwan and Phil Ivey.

In 2009 Sahamies travelled to Las Vegas to participate in the World Series of Poker and high stakes cash games. He only entered one WSOP event however, the $10,000 pot limit Omaha, and was denied entry to the Main Event as it was sold out. During this visit he played at the famous Bobby’s Room, winning a massive pot worth $1,700,000, before losing an even bigger pot worth $2,400,000 to his old friend Patrik Antonius, despite running it twice.

Crazy Fact: Ziigmund once lost $500k playing drunk online in 2010. Taken from his blog post on Cardplayer in February 2010, he wrote "so sick.I lost yesterday totally f drunk 500k....then I woke up and lost in totally hangover 300k more....then we went to watch tennis to Red Label arena or whatever and I lost 130k more to Justine Henin....Im up now 20k on my holidaytrip...whatever...now I start to play TIGHT."

Various other rumours have surfaced of Ziigmund going on huge downswings at the tables whilst playing drunk online poker - He's certainly one of the most entertaining players of the game! Sahamies is infamous for his trash talk while at the poker table, not restricting himself to when playing live poker, he is well known for posting in the chat box when playing online as well. There is a thread on 2+2 dedicated to Ziigmund’s chat box exploits, started in 2008 and still updated today, which can be found here.