Black Friday And The Rise Of Patrik Antonius

Since April 15th and the mass exodus of US players from Full Tilt’s virtual felts,  Patrik Antonius has succeeded in taking advantage of the site’s nosebleed high-stakes games.
Previously this year, the Monaco based Finn was ranging between either being up or down by $600k but his fortunes have recently sky-rocketed with the sudden absence of such players as Phil Ivey, Tom “Durrrr” Dwan and Dan “Jungleman12” Cates.
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Starting this month down by $544,720, Patrik Antonius is now currently showing a profit of $1,756,238 for 2011 playing mostly $300/$600 6-Max PLO games.
Competing against online pros Andreas “Skjervoy” Torbergsen, Gus Hansen, DrugsOrMe, Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies and Rui Cao, Patrik Antonius played just 2,278 hands of PLO this week to boost his bankroll by an incredible $1.7 million.
Patrik Antonius is considered to be one of the best poker players in the world and the absence of tough American competition seems to have now added a new dynamic to his game reflected in a mighty boost to his win rate
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for some of the other pros still playing on Full Tilt. For instance, Gus Hansen has dropped over a million dollars since ‘Black Friday,’ while Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies’ graph has travelled in the same direction to the tune of a quarter of a million dollars.
Since the two players have been mixing it up a bit more often against each other, Gus Hansen has become a lot more vocal in his criticism of Sahamies approach to the game and recently said:
“Who do they think they are? John Wayne? I know “Ziigmund” thinks he can deep stack outplay anyone in the world, but obviously looking at his results he can’t. Why do you want to put in $500,000 in a $200-$400 game just to get it all in when you have top set against flush and straight draws. Why do you want to flip a coin for that amount? It seems like players today think the bigger the better, because they think they are the greatest of all time.”
Another player also failing to capitalize since 15th April is Norwegian pro Andreas “skjervoy” Torbergsen who has seen his fortunes wane by a staggering $1.1 million over the past week. Torbergsen finished last year up by $3,778,763 but now has a lot of work to do if he is to get his game back on track and overcome his now $674,277 deficit in 2011.