Patrik Antonius

For millions of poker fans around the world, the heroes and villains depicted in ESPN’s iconic World Series of Poker broadcasts during the post-boom era are the only players worth knowing. And while Phil Hellmuth, Mike Matusow, and Daniel Negreanu are indeed special players worthy of high praise, at one point a quiet Finn without a gold bracelet to his credit managed to outplay each and every one of the game’s recognized superstars.
Patrik Antonius may not be a household name to casual poker fans, but those in the know have long regarded the 35-year old native of Finland as one of the best players on the planet. With nearly $20 million in reported cash game earnings, while playing online, primarily under the now legendary screenname “Finddagrind,” not to mention $6.7 million in live tournament cashes and countless high-stakes cash game scores, Antonius earned a reputation for fearless play early on.
Antonius was born on December 13th in Helsinki, Finland, where he became a tennis prodigy at a young age. Finnish coaches labeled Antonius as “Wimbledon material” when he was just 13 years old, and soon he was fully immersed in pre-professional training. Antonius graduated from Helsinki Business College, the equivalent of a high school in his homeland, before serving a mandatory stint in the Finnish Army. All the while he was devoted to pursuing professional tennis, but before he could realize his full potential on the court, a bulging disk in his back prevented him from competing in his first professional tennis tournament.
Even before that, however, Antonius was fueling his competitive fire by playing penny-ante poker games with friends. By the time he was fully engaged in tennis training, Antonius and his fellow players were squaring off for $50 pots in between matches. When an injury forced Antonius to withdraw from serious tennis competition, he transferred his determination to succeed into a new outlet: poker. As described by Antonius on his personal website, the decision came naturally even at such a young age:

Patrik Antonius poker results, stats, photos, videos, news, magazine columns, blogs, Twitter, and more. Patrik Antonius is a highly successful high stakes poker player who is a member of Team Full Tilt. Full Tilt Poker is a unique online poker room as it was started in 2004 and is still managed by some of the best poker players in the world, such as Phil Ivey, Chris Ferguson, Andy Bloch and Mike Matusow.

For high stakes veteran Patrik Antonius, a downswing is nothing new. This time though, a poor final outing where he only won one hand in five hours took its toll. Although we don’t know how much he. WPT Career Highlights Value Rank; Career Earnings: $1,309,902: 153: Cashes: 7: 545: Final Tables: 1: 2,282: Titles: 0: 16,414. View the profiles of people named Patrik Antonius. Join Facebook to connect with Patrik Antonius and others you may know. Facebook gives people the power.

“Right out of the Army I was ready to start playing professional tennis tournaments. But just before my first professional tournament, I suffered a terrible back injury. Luckily for me, my passion for poker was almost as strong as tennis, and now that I could not play tennis, I was going to focus on poker.”

Poker had always been Antonius’ second passion, and when he was just 18 he managed to turn $25 into $225 by winning Casino Helsinki’s weekly No-Limit Hold’em tournament. That feat alone wouldn’t merit mention, but when one considers that Antonius had never before played the game (specializing in Pot-Limit Omaha instead), it becomes clear that he possessed a natural talent for all forms of poker.
While Antonius honed his craft in the local $2/$2 Pot-Limit Omaha games, building bankrolls and going broke in steady cycles like so many players before him, he also dabbled in a number of side jobs to make ends meet. Modeling, coaching tennis, and even selling products as a door-to-door salesman sustained Antonius in his early 20s, but poker was always on the periphery of his daily life.
After a three-month culinary internship spent in Italy, where he abstained from poker for a time, Antonius returned home in January of 2003 to continue his studies at Helsinki Polytechnic Stadia. Online poker had gained a foothold within Scandinavia at this time, so Antonius brought his game to the virtual felt. After a series of initial $200 deposits, Antonius found his proverbial groove by becoming one of the first players to experiment with multi-tabling. Two months later he held more than $20,000 in his online poker account, a windfall which helped convince him to focus on poker full-time. As Antonius described this time in his life years later, the multi-tabling discovery prompted his meteoric rise through the ranks:

“The idea of being able to play anytime and more than one table at a time was unbelievable. I was hooked. I started studying the game and my opponents even more and immersed myself in the game.”

Between the months of March and December in 2003, Antonius played online poker for 12 hours a day, seven days a week. His bankroll grew well into the six-figures during this time, but improving health in his back led Antonius to give professional tennis a final shot in the form of a one-year scholarship to Averett University in Virginia. While he gave tennis one last go, Antonius was also fine-tuning his online game, trading high volume for higher stakes and winning six-figure sums in the span of just hours. Specializing in $50/$100 blinds heads-up tables and other short-handed variants, Antonius never relented and quickly became one of the online realm’s most consistent winners.
A trip to Las Vegas for the 2004 WSOP followed after Antonius won his entry to the Main Event via online satellite. His tour of the game’s iconic live event ultimately proved fruitless, but Antonius left Las Vegas convinced that live tournament titles were an attainable goal.
What followed was one of the most impressive calendar years recorded during poker’s boom days. In 2005 Antonius made the money in a total of nine live tournaments, with each resulting in a top-40 finish or higher. Antonius began his year by recording a pair of top-15 finishes on the World Poker Tour, before cashing three times at the 2005 WSOP over the summer. He then went on to win the Ladbrokes Scandinavian Poker Championship in August, before finishing in third place in a European Poker Tour event for a $145,068 score. Just one month after his near miss Antonius broke through with his first EPT victory, taking top honors at the EPT Baden Main Event while earning $343,365.
Antonius wasn’t finished yet, however, and he closed off 2005 by finishing as the runner-up in the $15,300 buy-in WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic – a premier event featuring a full cast of the game’s most celebrated figures. Antonius outlasted Phil Laak (6th) and Doyle Brunson (3rd) at the final table to take home $1,046,470 in prize money – the first of many million dollar paydays to come. Antonius later described this yearlong run of dominance in typically understated fashion:

“In the summer of 2005, I got hot on the tournament circuit and went on a run that still puts a smile on my face. It was a very exciting time for me and my plan of moving to Las Vegas was in full effect.”

With his status as one of poker’s rising superstars now firmly cemented, Antonius went on to become a favorite for fans of High Stakes Poker, the first television program to feature professionals playing high-stakes cash games while risking their own money. Appearing on Seasons 3 through 6, Antonius was typically quiet at the table, but his fearless play spoke volumes.
In a pot contested during Season 4 in 2007, Antonius played what was the largest pot in show history at the time, taking top pair against Sammy Farha’s over-cards and flush draw with a staggering $998,800 pot on the line. The two pros agreed to run the turn and river four times, and Antonius faded the deck on three occasions to collect a $749,100 portion of the pot.
Due to his widespread success in both tournaments and cash games, as well as his reputation as one of the online game’s most respected figures, Antonius signed on to become a sponsored pro for “Team Full Tilt” in 2008. In 2009 Antonius claimed the largest online poker pot ever played, scooping $1,356,946 in a single hand of heads-up $500/$1,000 Pot-Limit Omaha against Viktor “Isildur1” Blom on Full Tilt Poker. When the site went belly up in 2011 following the events of “Black Friday,” Antonius claimed to have lost $5 million after Full Tilt funds were suddenly frozen.
While he rarely plays in live tournaments any longer, Antonius managed to accumulate more than $6.78 million in reported live earnings during a decade of dominance on the global circuit. That includes his largest live cash to date, a $1.23 million haul for finishing as the runner-up in the 2012 Aussie Millions $250,000 buy-in high-roller event.

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The summer was going better than expected for Patrik Antonius. That all changed for the Finn after losing more than $500,000 in a big $6,000/$12,000 Omaha 8 or Better game over the course of three days. This accounted for all the funds Antonius brought with him to Las Vegas for the summer.

Antonius felt dejected after his loss and shared his feelings and some details about the game in a six-minute video on Instagram called 'Update from Vegas. Sometimes things don’t go as planned..'

Antonius: 'when you lose that much, it is the biggest anti-adrenaline feeling.'

Scott Seiver Tweets About the Game

It's not unusual for high stakes games to run at Bellagio's Bobby's Room as this is what the room is well-known for. It's also not unheard of for nosebleed mixed games to run, especially during the summer when players from around the world descend to Las Vegas for the World Series of Poker and other big events.

What is unusual is for the game to change to strictly Limit Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better. Yesterday, Scott Seiver first Tweeted about a $5,000/$10,000 Omaha-8 game running at Bobby's Room for twenty straight hours, which players and poker fans were talking about both on Twitter and in a thread on TwoPlusTwo. It is so uncommon, the poker room needed to tape over a plaque with the stakes listed at the table.

Well it finally happened. All the shit talking in Bobby’s Room has finally created a 5k-10k game that is now going… https://t.co/wa5XQ804fk

— Scott Seiver (@scott_seiver)

A couple of players shared they wanted to play if possible including bracelet winner Owais Ahmed while others joked that the $15 timed rake per half hour was too much or that they wanted to buy-in for two big bets.

Patrik Antonius Shares his Story

The game began well as Antonius shared in the video that he was ahead after the first day the game was running. He then began to feel sick from potential food poisoning. The Finn shared he quickly recovered and dove back into the action and lost some stacks.

Antonius headed back for what he described morosely as 'a bad couple of days.' He said yesterday he was only able to win one hand the entire time and at the end, he left Bobby's Room with a loss of over $500,000; his entire Vegas roll.

The usually stoic poker personality showed a rare glimpse of emotion about the loss and needed a break after losing for at least a little while.

To most poker players losing this much would be life-altering. However, Antonius in the past has played both live and online pots where the winner won more than the amount of his total loss. Besides, losing half a million while playing that high, isn't unheard of. That being said, Antonius said the big swings are something that he and most other poker players never get used to.

'At those kind of stakes, it always hurts a lot to lose that kind of money,' said Antonius. 'For the people that don't know how it feels, if they wonder that, it doesn't feel as good as you win. It feels more like normal when you win. And when you lose that much, it is the biggest anti-adrenaline feeling.'

Even for a seasoned pro like Antonius, it isn't easy to get back into the game after losing big.

Antonius: 'Winners bounce back. This is the life I have chosen. I am strong enough for all this bullshit.'

'To me at least it really puts you down and that's when you really test how strong you are mentally and how fast you can recover,' Antonius said about his loss. 'Also, it's a tough day after that to have a good day in general whether in sports or communicating with others.'

While Antonius is out of funds in Vegas, a poker pro of his stature is unlikely to run into a problem raising a new bankroll to get back into the game. According to Antonius, this could indeed happen but not in his current mindset where he will not only be able to enjoy poker but his other hobbies as well including sports.

Antonius feels he will bounce back soon sharing near the end of the video that: 'Winners bounce back. This is the life I have chosen. I am strong enough for all this bullshit. I'll be fine.'

Watch the full video here:

A post shared by Patrik Antonius Official (@patrik_antonius_official) on

Patrik Antonius Poker

_{Lead Bellagio image via 'chensiyuan' (Wikipedia)}

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