The 26 year old Italian-born pro shot to fame and fortune as a teenager under his online moniker ‘lasagnaaammm’, picking up big scores as he served his ‘apprenticeship’ which turned out to be a 5-year plan ending in one of the hottest streaks in poker history.
Unlike many young players, Kanit combined online and live play equally well, and when he scooped his first big win at the IPT Nova Gorica in 2011 – a $274,000 payday – it doubled his rookie year earnings and was the first sign that he would turn into a special player.
Two years later and he was regularly cashing in the top spots at the biggest events, 4th in the PCA $25,500 High Roller for $492,600, 1st in the AU$1,100 NLHE, Aussie Millions for $173,517 as well as 1st in the $1,100 NLHE Six-Max, Aussie Millions for $90,698 – and a host of other cashes in 2014.
If that wasn’t impressive enough, it was only the start of the most ridiculous run seen in modern poker outside of Fedor Holz’s 2016 heater.
Kanit won the €50k NLHE Super High Roller at the EPT Grand Final in Monaco, snagging a very cool €936,500, followed it up by winning the €10k High Roller at EPT Barcelona for €738,759 and then a third spot in the €25k High Roller WSOP Europe taking home €227,145.
And 2016 would prove to be even more amazing! Live beasting saw him come 4th in the $100k Super High Roller at the 2016 PCA, a $596,360 payday and then he took down the €25k High Roller at EPT Dublin, another €501,640 pocketed.
Online was the same story; 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; he shipped the FTOPS Main Event for $239k; the SCOOP 2K Turbo for $376k and the Scoop 10k (the hardest online MTT) for a further $1.3 million. Add everything together and you get a whopping $4,436,272, without leaving the comfort of his own room.
Kanit’s aggressive-style has proved to be perfectly suited to the live tournament scene, although he admitted recently that he still prefers the virtual felt.
“Maybe things are a little better for me when I play online”, he stated in an interview 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.”
When he was first pick for the GPL team Rome Emperors, boss Max Pescatori said:
“He’s doing something that no one has really done ever. The last two years have been unbelievable. He’s on the run of a lifetime- you don’t know when he will stop.”
With well over $15million in mixed earnings, Mustapha Kanit has already secured his place among poker’s best players – the only real question is what heights can he reach in the future?
