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Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2008
Biggest pot ever, traffic surge rule Sept.
Mr. B: Nice month.
The re-birth of high-stakes online NL Hold'em. Major traffic increases across the board. Two near-$1-million days (one up, one down) for Tom "durrrr" Dwan.
All big news in online poker this month. But all upstaged by a bigger story.
After 11 years of online poker without crossing the $600k pot barrier, the game steamrolled into the future in September with not just one, but two $600k+ pots changing hands - including the biggest pot ever won online, for an awe-inspiring $610,000.
Even more of a story? The winning player and the winning hand.
Not Phil Ivey. Not Patrik Antonius. Not even one of the fearless young guns of poker like durrrr or Hac "trex313" Dang.
No, the new owner of the biggest pot in online poker history is reputed online fish "patatino," who somehow managed to sneak into the record books on Sept. 12 and scoop the infamous pot with nothing more than a pair of deuces. (Read the full story here; watch the hand in the PokerListings.com Hand Replayer here).
To fully cement the record-breaking month, after the 11-year wait it was a mere 11 hours more before online poker saw its second biggest pot ever.
The beneficiary this time was the more renowned Full Tilt pro David Benyamine, who, while ultimately going on to take the $605k pot, was actually well on his way to losing it before an ace on the turn changed everything. (Read the full story here; watch the hand in the PokerListings.com Hand Replayer here.)
The catalyst for the resurgence in high-stakes Hold'em this month has, of course, been the pull of the marquee $500/$1,000 NLHE RailHeaven table at Full Tilt Poker.
A true litany of poker's biggest names and best young players caught the RailHeaven fever and stepped up to play over and over, with a round-the-clock watch for the biggest fish, day after day of big action and literally millions of dollars changing hands.
Dwan: Always seems to swing the right way eventually.
Ivey, Antonius, Benyamine, Phil "OMGClayAiken" Galfond ... all were big players as expected, but at the center of most of the big sessions was certainly Dwan.
It seemed like Dwan did hardly anything but play ridiculously long sessions of nosebleed-stakes poker this month, and subsequently had the joy of not only winning roughly $1 million in a day, but also losing $1 million in a day. (Stories here and here).
The end result: $657k in Hold'em profit for him and a truly record-breaking month in online poker overall, with more than 30 pots over $300,000, plenty of big winners and plenty of big losers from beginning to end.
See the full list of huge pots this month with hand histories here.
More monthly numbers of note, as tracked by the PokerListings.com MarketPulse software:
Online Poker Traffic Report
Playing second fiddle to the huge-pot slinging in Sept. but a notable story in its own right is the dramatic surge in online poker traffic across most poker rooms.
It's not entirely unexpected, given summer winding down, college kids back in school and with the huge draw of the $30 million WCOOP on PokerStars, but still, online poker rooms must be pleased with the surge in traffic volume this month as players are hitting the felt in droves.
Whatever the underlying reason, traffic is up at virtually all rooms, led unsurprisingly by the two biggest players in the industry, PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. with traffic up a startling 43% at Stars and 30% at Tilt from last month.
In fact, September has been the busiest month yet this year at both Stars and Tilt, with Stars averaging 18,644 players on average over a 24 hour period and Tilt clocking in with 8,039.
Both have also seen their busiest traffic days of the year overall, with Stars' busiest day on Sun. Sept. 28 bringing in 21,340 players on average, and Tilt's busiest on Wed. Sept. 17 drawing 8,598 players on average.
Also seeing increases in traffic this month were Titan Poker (up 2% to 5,070 players on average), Party Poker (up 3% to 4,288), Mansion Poker (shift to iPoker network leading to 12% upswing and 4,185 players on average), Everest Poker (4% to 2,331), Paradise Poker (16% to 1,643), DoylesRoom (9% to 1,613) and Pacific Poker (7% to 1,007).
See the full report here.
Top Online Moneymakers/Losses
With the surge in RailHeaven action it's only natural the overall profit numbers for the game's best players also soared this month.
Leading the charge was David Benyamine, who has been running white-hot lately and used his $600k pot to slingshot himself to almost $1 million in Hold'em profit.
Chris "Genius28" Lee: Smarter than your average TAG.
Following closely behind were Hac "trex313" Dang and Phil Galfond, bringing in over $900k in Hold'em profit each this month. A good month all around for the Dang brothers actually, as Hac's brother Di "Urindanger" Dang also made the top 10 Hold'em Moneymakers list, raking in $300k of his own
Perhaps the saddest news of all? Despite his record-breaking pot, things quickly spun downhill for patatino this month and he ended up leading the pack in Hold'em losses at over $1 million.
Rest of the top 10 lists below and the full top 100 lists here and here.
Top 10 Online Hold'em Moneymakers in September:
| Rank | Player | Poker Room | Total |
| 1. | David Benyamine | Full Tilt | $979,262 |
| 2. | trex313 | Full Tilt | $975,151 |
| 3. | OMGClayAiken | Full Tilt | $912,397 |
| 4. | durrrr | Full Tilt | $657,862 |
| 5. | Peter W Jepsen | Full Tilt | $372,885 |
| 6. | Genius28 | Full Tilt | $348,089 |
| 7. | KPR16 | Full Tilt | $341,779 |
| 8. | Hoss_TBF | Full Tilt | $341,501 |
| 9. | Spiked | Full Tilt | $314,202 |
| 10. | Urindanger | Full Tilt | $308,089 |
Top 10 Online Hold'em Losses in September:
| Rank | Player | Poker Room | Total |
| 1. | patatino | Full Tilt | (-$1,017,344) |
| 2. | Phil Ivey | Full Tilt | (-$611,602) |
| 3. | elmariachimacho | Full Tilt | (-$609,039) |
| 4. | vlindermes | Full Tilt | (-$360,711) |
| 5. | ImTheFranchise | Full Tilt | (-$351,718) |
| 6. | pr1nnyraid | Full Tilt | (-$330,615) |
| 7. | just_the_nuts | Full Tilt | (-$330,085) |
| 8. | luckexpress10 | Full Tilt | (-$328,774) |
| 9. | PRTECTYANECK | Absolute Poker | (-$283,238) |
| 10. | good2cu | Full Tilt | (-$274,075) |
For more key online poker industry markers for the month of September, jump to the MarketPulse section.
More big online poker stories this month:
More News
- Antonius, Isildur1 hit record $1.3 million pot
- Isildur1 takes another $674k from durrrr
- Weekly freerolls: $25k PokerStars freeroll today
- Ivey stomps Isildur1 for $1.2 million
- Isildur1 claims another million dollar victim
- Isildur1 takes on Team Full Tilt
- Antonius wins $2.4 million and takes back the lead
- Antonius takes biggest pot in online poker history
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