Ziigmund’s wild ride continues

April 3, 2008

If you’re into railing high-stakes online poker, there are plenty of super-skilled, technically sound pros worth watching as they toss their bankrolls around.

But seriously: there’s only one Ziigmund.

Quite possibly, pound-for-railbird-pound, the most entertaining player on the Internet, the one and only Finnish flashpoint Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies has been up to his usual tricks again over the last couple of days.

What tricks exactly?

1) Wild bankroll swings: up $200k one minute, down $400k a half-hour later.

2) “Non-traditional” poker moves, to say the least, leaving everyone on the rail wondering if he mis-clicked or is completely tilted.

3) And, of course, last but not least, belligerent, xenophobic chat box banter with his opponents – including the popular “u r f horrible” and “hope u die” – which always send the railbirds into delirious re-posting fits of joy.

Add the tricks up and it’s easy to see why Ziigmund draws a massive crowd whenever he sits down for a session.

It’s also easy to see, because of the stakes and maniacal play, why Ziigmund also dominates the top 10 list of the biggest hold’em pots online whenever he blesses the online tables with his presence.

In typical Ziigmund fashion, up around $600k for the last few days, he seemed to be fairly intent on giving most of his recent profits back in his latest session.

After a couple of massive pots went against him in his beloved PLO, he jumped in to a quick $300/$600 No-Limit Hold’em session with a couple of respected high-stakes regulars – Brian “tsarrast” Rast and Di “Urindanger” Dang – and paid the price for it.

That price? Somewhere around $200k, with Ziigmund on the losing end of four $100k+ pots within the space of an hour and a half – the top two of which, totaling a crazy $400,000, both now sitting comfortably in the bankroll of Mr. Rast.

The biggest, for $217,235.50, went down as follows:

Full Tilt Poker Game #5879663418 TABLE : Journey (heads up) $300/$600 – No Limit Hold’em – Wed Apr 2nd 2008 – 11:35am ET

Table Setup

Seat 1: tsarrast ($140,781)
Seat 2: Ziigmund ($108,618)
tsarrast posts the small blind of $300
Ziigmund posts the big blind of $600
The button is in seat #1

Pre-flop

tsarrast raises to $1,800
Ziigmund raises to $6,200
tsarrast calls $4,400

Flop