The Railbird Report: Online’s Biggest Winner Patrik Antonius Back in Action

For many years, Phil Ivey was considered the best poker player in the world. Not only was he the biggest winner live, for a long time he also held the top spot in the online rankings, where he’s won $19,242,743 according to HighStakesDB.com. But as Full Tilt Poker went down, and Ivey switched to PokerStars to play under the moniker “RaiseOnce”, so did his graph. He lost $2,483,564 on PokerStars, and lost another $6,317,217 on Full Tilt Poker after the site returned under Amaya’s umbrella and he resumed play as “Polarizing”. He’s still up $10,441,962 overall, but by no means is that enough to come out on top at the online poker all-time money list.

That title is now reserved for Patrik Antonius, who surpassed his archrival despite also being down online in recent years. We combined all his known accounts into one big graph to give you an idea of the swings the Fin endured since starting online many years ago, and how much he’s up. Emphasis on ‘give you an idea’, as the graph is anything but conclusive, as explained underneath:

Patrik Antonius results online (click for bigger version)

The graph has been plotted with data from HighStakesDB.com, and shows Antonius up $16,920,166. Antonius played on multiple accounts on Full Tilt Poker in the early days of the online poker room. While not all accounts have been confirmed to be his, it was widely rumored and in some cases public knowledge at the time that it was Antonius playing. Before Antonius signed with Full Tilt Poker, it was common for high-stakes players to switch accounts every now and then, before this practice became condemned by not only Full Tilt Poker but other poker sites as well.

The results tracked begin in 2007, but Antonius was already one of the biggest players online before that, starting at the end of 2005. Antonius regularly battled the likes of Prahlad Friedman and Johnny Lodden at the highest stakes on the Prima network (now MicroGaming). The results from that period of time aren’t available and results aren’t incorporated into the graph above. If you’re interested in reading about the action back then, be sure to check out the threads dedicated to the subject on the Full Contact Poker and TwoPLusTwo poker forums.

While the graph shows 2009 to be a very profitable year for Antonius, he was down for the year according to an interview with CardPlayer in February 2010:

“It might look like I did very well, but I lost millions, millions, millions of dollars with other stuff last year. It looks like no matter how much you win, you never have a lot of money.” […] “I’ve had some bad investments. I’ve lost a lot of — a lot of — money last year with other people, and I lost some money in sports betting, too. I’ve been very unlucky with other people. I think I’m down in my lifetime close to $10 million for taking pieces of other people. That’s a lot of money. It’ll be hard to get it back in my lifetime. When I bet sports, I bet at least $50,000. And I don’t think I won any bets last year. And I lost millions on the golf course, as well. I’m a big …

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