Ilari Sahamies' Cash Game Roller Coaster Ride

Famed for his hyper loose aggressive style, Ilari ”Ilari FIN” Sahamies is one of the most talented pros on the circuit but also one of its most volatile, as one look at his cash game results will confirm.
While playing at Full Tilt Poker, Ilari Sahamies was $7 million in profit by December 2009 only to drop $6 million over the next year and a half to close out up $838,820. The Finnish pro’s time playing at PokerStars has been equally as dramatic and in 2011 was the site’s  biggest winner with a $2,183,832 profit, only to write “I don’t have any money left..I’m sick” by May 2012.
As any poker pro will tell you bankroll management and avoiding tilt is key to avoiding a poker meltdown, and unfortunately the 29 year old has had issues on both fronts over the years. Back in August, 2011, for instance, Sahamies lost around $1 million whilst playing $100/$200 Pot Limit Omaha against Viktor “Isildur1” Blom, half of which was due to terrible run of bad luck. Unfortunately, Sahamies then compounded his own misfortune by continuing at the time and later wrote on his blog:
“y0…Just finished games against Isildur..came down from top 1,3 million in 2 days and felt really bad already when I was down 200k from the top…Dont know why I continued after 500k down….really dont know…I played very weak and that was fair I lost my money. Now my girlfriend has to use sunglasses few days..I start to play 25 50 next week.”
Despite losing $726,940 during the first few months of this year, Ilari Sahamies has since managed to reduce his deficit to $341,899 and is still showing a $1,841,933 profit on PokerStars since January 2011. Nevertheless, Sahamies’ aggressive game means he will continue to experiences greater swings than most and a couple of weeks ago was the week’s biggest winner with a $492k profit, only to be PokerStars’ biggest loser the following week down $445.3k spread over 1,724 hands.