Friday, May 30, 2008

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Awe-inspiring Omaha action dominates May stats

By Christopher Hunt

The month of May in the poker world is like the eye of a hurricane.

With a lull in the usually heavy live tournament action, most players seemingly just bide their time - and bankrolls - until the WSOP.

Unless of course their primary game is high-stakes online Pot-Limit Omaha.

There's no doubt about it: high-stakes PLO at Full Tilt Poker was the dominant newsmaker in online poker last month - and rightly so. The action was boggling, with day after day of the best players online throwing their rolls around, both heads-up and at the six-max tables.

All the big hitters were in on it - Tom "durrrr" Dwan, David Benyamine, Patrik Antonius, Gus Hansen, Ilari "ziigmund" Sahamies, Brian Hastings, Markus Golser, Steve Sung, ICallSoWhat, CHUFTY, Cole South, Brian "tsarrast" Rast... the list goes on and on.

And in all, well over a hundred $100k+ pots changed hands, highlighted by five pots topping out over $300k.

Dwan and Benyamine  clearly dominated the overall winners for the month, with Benyamine continuing the massive heater he's been on since the beginning of the year and taking away over $1.6 million from the PLO tables - bringing his 2008 total to an astounding $8 million.

Tom "durrrr" Dwan: Dominating.

Young gun Tom "durrrr" Dwan has been right there with him, though, with two standout moments in particular in an altogether standout month.

One of those: hitting a ten-high straight against Markus Golser to scoop a massive $428k pot - unofficially the second-biggest pot at Full Tilt ever and just $700 behind a $429k pot won by Brian Townsend last year.

The second: walking away with an astonishing $900k, according to highstakesdb.com, from a lengthy session just yesterday.

Also of note: you know it's a huge month when even ziigmund runs well - as of yesterday he's reportedly up $1.4 million for the month, completely recovering from his major downswing to start '08 that saw him stuck about $1.3 million.

To check out all of the top 100 biggest pots won online over the last day, week, month and year, visit the MarketPulse biggest pots section.

Other industry numbers of note from PokerListings.com's Marketpulse section:

Average pot size up again at Pacific Poker and Full Tilt

If average pot size is any indication - and it is - games at both Pacific Poker and Full Tilt got looser all around this month.

Average pot size at Pacific in May was a killer $51.20 - up 12% from April, and the average at Full Tilt shot up to $41.50 - a phenomenal 21% rise (although much of it can likely be attributed to the aforementioned high-stakes Omaha action).

Other sites with pot-size increases: DoylesRoom, up 3% from April to $35.40; PokerStars, up 11% to $21.50; PartyPoker, up 2% to $21.30 and Absolute Poker, also up 2% to $20.20.

Top 5 rooms overall for pot size: Pacific Poker , Full Tilt, DoylesRoom, Titan Poker and UltimateBet; check here for full details.

Online Traffic Report

A slight dip in traffic all across the board in May (it is spring, after all) with one notable exception: Players are flocking to Hollywood Poker in droves, showing a 20% increase from an average of 3,451 players in April to 4,146 on average in May.

Traffic drops were very minimal all around, however, averaging between 2-8%. PokerStars still leads the way traffic-wise with an average of 12,249 players.

See the full online poker traffic report here.

For more illuminating stats and trends in the online poker industry, visit the full PokerListings.com MarketPulse section.

More News

• Isildur1 takes on Antonius, Galfond and Hastings
• Isildur1 crushes Cole South for $500k
• Brian Townsend rocks Isildur1 for $300k
• Cole South teaches Isildur1 a $300k lesson
• FTOPS XIV starts tonight
• Dwan loses another $1.3 million
• Patrik Antonius tops $7 million on the year
• Weekly freerolls: Over $78k in prizes on the way