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Of all the public faces of Full Tilt Poker, Phil Ivey and Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan are performing well short of their pre-Black Friday high stakes levels. Meanwhile, Patrik Antonius continues exactly where he left off.
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Full Tilt Poker has basically always been considered a haven for online high stakes poker, with the best cash game players usually collecting dollars in this room. Before the Black Friday, FTP pros used to make up the majority of the elite of high stakes poker and even among them, Phil Ivey, Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan and Patrik Antonius were considered the best.
Ivey was widely regarded as simply the best poker player alive, regardless of game type; ‘durrrr’ was a prominent member of the young generation of emerging poker pros; and Antonius was the textbook example of the aggressive Scandinavian poker player. They owned the high stakes field with the following results between 2007 and September 2011, the revoking of the FTP licence.
Ivey: +$19,242,744 (319,285 hands)
Antonius: +$11,837,531 (486,471 hands)
durrrr: +$2,402,039 (993,125 hands)
While Dwan’s results are far behind those of Ivey’s and Antonius’, he ran extremely poor in 2011, losing $2,474,309 over the year – a huge downswing according to many at the time.
After FTP was shut down, the three of them turned to live cash games, first of all in Macau. Even though it had always been rumoured they were checking out the high stakes games at PokerStars, they played definitely less than in the previous period. As a result, the question emerged with the re-launch of FTP if they can keep up with the field which frequented PokerStars and if they still are the kings of online high stakes poker, or if they are history.
Well, it would be a long shot to say anything for certain yet, the players having played too small a sample to draw conclusions, but it is still worth taking a look at their stats of the period since the restart of FTP in November, 2012.
Clearly, Ivey runs the worst, playing under the ‘Polarizing’ screen name. In the time frame in question, he has lost a total of $3,093,778, fourth only to Gus Hansen ($7,329,059 in 179,143 hands), ‘MalACEsia’ ($3,773,524 in 42,742 hands) and ‘samrostan’ ($3,423,771 in 44,264 hands). While his sample is not large, with 66,297 hands it is safe to say he is far behind his former self, when he managed to dominate his opponents almost without variance. Of course, today’s field does not allow such an overwhelming edge but the loss of almost $3.1 is more than surprising from the nine times WSOP champion.
‘Durrrr’ has not dominated the field recently, either, to say the least. He has been displaying improvement over the past months but his sample is also inadequate for long term conclusions. He was quick to return to the FTP tables last year but lost $987,189 until the end of 2012 in 17,826 hands. In 2013, he has so far won $951,847 in 65,605 hands.
Like Ivey, Antonius has also returned under a new screen name, going under the ‘FinddaGrind’ account (‘durrrr’ has remained a Team Pro member, therefore he needed no new account). While admitting that he had barely played online after Black Friday, the Finn pro continued his rampage and won a total of $2,208,900 in 57,294 hands since last November.
He restarted the hard way as well, losing $521,983 in 13,546 hands still using his ‘Patrik Antonius’ nick, but renaming to ‘FinddaGrind’ apparently proved fruitful, earning $2,730,883 in 43,748 hands. Only five players could best him in terms of total profit, taking only FTP results into consideration: ‘cottonseed1’ ($3,652,436 in 44,231 hands), ‘PostflopAction’ ($3,299,364 in 76,398 hands), ‘ragen70’ ($3,130,987 in 34,271 hands), ‘Bttech86’ ($2,849,569 in 116,082 hands) and ‘Rhje’ ($2,504,857 in 62,747 hands).
In the period between November, 2012 and 18 September, 2013, the three players have shown the following results, sorted by game type:
NLHE
FinddaGrind: +$301,077 (4,219)
Polarizing: -$279,614 (795)
durrrr: -$916,549 (24,349)
PLO
Patrik Antonius: +$114,526 (495)
FinddaGrind: -$226,984 (3,043)
durrrr: -$285,181 (22,617)
Polarizing: -$678,563 (6,258)
Omaha Hi-Low
FinddaGrind: +$2,611,025 (11,800)
durrrr: +$192,359 (3,379)
Polarizing: -$909,118 (19,156)
Draw
durrrr: +$697,177 (30,287)
FinddaGrind: +$271,781 (15,846)
Patrik Antonius: -$352,602 (2,345)
Polarizing: -$1,327,798 (19,379)
8-Game
Polarizing: +$313,571 (17,331)
durrrr: +$227,805 (2,718)
FinddaGrind: -$55,933 (8,202)
Patrik Antonius: -$283,907 (10,706)
Antonius runs best in Omaha Hi-Low but fares well in NLHE as well. Interestingly enough, Ivey, who has always been considered a true all round player, is currently able to win in 8-Game only.
What do you think of the performance of the three players? Can they make it back to the top of online high stakes poker?