Mario Puccini

One of many talented players hailing from Germany, there is a lot of mystery surrounding Hamburg-born Mario Puccini. He is known for his success in the online world under the screenname ‘Pokerccini’, but the German has done his best to conceal the specifics of his MTT tournament results on tracking sites like PocketFives and Official Poker Rankings (something that many talented players do so that their opponents can’t research them). What we do know is that Mario began playing poker in 2007 and used a $50 deposit bonus on PartyPoker as his starting bankroll.

Since then, he has gone one to win major online titles such as the Super Tuesday on PokerStars and racked up well over $3,000,000 in online earnings.

Though Mario has never picked up a major title in the live tournament arena, he’s certainly come close. In 2012, he made the final table of the €5,000 Main Event at EPT Berlin after getting past the likes of high-stakes regular Pratyush Buddiga and fellow German talent Philipp Gruissem. Unfortunately, his fourth-place finish was not enough to win the top prize but Puccini still earned a huge $287,612.

This deep run followed an earlier EPT Main Event run he made in Loutraki the previous year. Given the German’s location, he made regularly appearances on the European tournament circuit between 2008 and 2015. Since then, it appears that Mario’s live activity has ceased but it’s likely that he’s still grinding MTTs online.