A very merry December according to stats

One would think that December would be a good month for online poker players to take a break from the game, but apparently the players themselves didn't agree.

Perhaps it was the lack of live high-stakes tournaments, or maybe people were just trying to escape their relatives, but online poker traffic was up on almost all the major sites.

PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and PartyPoker all saw modest gains compared to the month of November.

PokerStars was the most impressive, with a 10% boost in traffic for December. It might have something to do with the site's record-breaking "World's largest tournament" on the last Sunday of the month. At any rate, they are definitely living up to their status as the world's largest poker room.

Meanwhile Full Tilt continues to be the location for high-stakes action, as the ultra-rounders flocked to the site in December. A total of six pots worth more than half a million dollars were awarded in the last month of the year.

While many players had a successful month, no one did better than online phenomenon Tom "durrrr" Dwan. It has actually been an up-and-down year for Dwan, and some were starting to wonder if we'd see his first losing year at poker. Instead, Dwan put in what would probably be considered his best year ever.

As of Dec. 31 Dwan is up a staggering $3.4 million in Hold'em alone in the month of December, according to MarketPulse data collected throughout the month. Remember those six pots worth over half a million each? Dwan won four of them.

Dwan looks to finish the year with over $6 million in Hold'em profit. That's almost twice as much as David Chiu earned for winning the World Poker Tour World Championship in Vegas.

Phil "OMGClayAiken" Galfond had the second most impressive December, pulling in a cool million in Hold'em profit to bring him up to $3 million for the year.

Finally, Patrik Antonius, who has also had an up-and-down year, tried to make up for some losses by posting a $898,125 profit in Hold'em for the month of December.

So who was down? Well, Finnish maniac Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies had himself a bit of a downswing and showed a loss of $1.6 million in Hold'em for the month of December. Rumor has it that Sahamies has been dominating the PLO games, so it's not all bad.

Unidentified online player elmariachimacho continued a losing trend, bleeding $1.2 million in the month of December. If the rumors are true and elmariachimacho is billionaire entrepreneur Guy Laliberté, he might want to start thinking about starting another Cirque du Soleil.

That sums up most of the major happenings in online poker in the month of December. Be sure to check out our MarketPulse Year in Review tomorrow to get a complete look at what's been the story of online poker in 2008.

Related Article:

• Ziigmund and Dwan get late Christmas Presents
• Phil Galfond puts hurt on Gus Hansen
• No one-hit won-durrrr: Dwan up to $5 million