Recognized as one of the hottest young players on the poker circuit - and not just for his poker skills - Patrik Antonius sets tongues wagging wherever he goes.

His undeniable talent at the green felt combined with an enormous bankroll and millions in poker winnings would be enough to make any grown man weep. Combine this with a strong resemblance to Brad Pitt, a gorgeous Israeli fiancée, and a beautiful baby girl, and you've got trouble.

Patrik was born to a working-class family in the suburbs of Helsinki, Finland, on December 13, 1980. His father worked as a bread delivery man and his mother found work at a day-care center to help make ends meet. A rambunctious and competitive youth, Patrik played soccer, tennis and hockey, and worked hard to keep himself out of detention.

He was particularly gifted at tennis, and by the age of 13 had been singled out by his coaches as a child with Wimbledon potential. He dropped the other sports and began a tennis training regime, but suffered a serious setback a couple of years later when a bulging disc in his back forced him to stop training for a year and a half.

It was around this time that he and his friends began playing poker almost daily at the tennis club. Patrik had first anted up at age 11 in a backyard game where the stakes were 50¢ to spend at the candy store. At the tennis club the stakes were significantly higher: $50 pots and bragging rights.

"It was a great time in my life," Patrik says on his Web site, "right after school playing tennis and poker all afternoon."

The games continued throughout high school and the stakes eventually outgrew the club. Having just discovered Pot-Limit Omaha, the young rounders began playing home games till the early hours of the morning, often only stopping when a parent got up to go to work.

When Patrik turned 18 he brought his game to Casino Helsinki, the only casino in Finland at the time, where he took down the weekly $25 No-Limit Hold'em event and its $225 prize on his first try. A Hold'em champion without ever trying, Patrik won the tournament despite having never played the game before.

The aspiring tennis champ graduated from Helsinki Business College shortly after with a high school degree and was conscripted into the army for mandatory service. He was accepted to the Army Sport division and, although much of his gruelling six-month service was spent camping in the woods, he was allowed to practice tennis whenever he was back on base.

Upon release from the army Patrik was primed to start serious training for his tennis career, but fate had other plans. The young Finn suffered another back injury just before his first professional tennis tournament was scheduled to take place, crippling his dreams of tennis superstardom and forcing him to the sidelines permanently.

With a bulging disk in his back and his tennis dreams broken at his feet, Patrik had to find something to occupy his time. He began studying business and meandered through different jobs: modelling, serving tables at restaurants, selling products door-to-door and even coaching tennis, but nothing paid enough, and nothing was as satisfying as tennis.

Convinced he was destined to do something unconventional with his life and determined to make use of his competitive spirit and drive, Patrik began to focus more and more on poker - the one hobby he'd stuck with throughout the years.

He increased his home-game play and bellied up to the $2/$2 Pot-Limit Omaha tables more frequently at the casino. It took some time, but after a couple of years of dedicated play and bigger stakes, the self-schooled poker pro began to build a solid bankroll. Shortly after, in the summer of 2002, Antonius hit a hot streak, winning consistently and fattening up his bankroll even more.

The spell was broken when he left Helsinki for a three-month culinary internship in Italy in the fall on 2002. As an apprentice at several different restaurants, Patrik didn't play poker for the duration of his stay and managed to blow a large chunk of his bankroll.

When he returned to Scandinavia in January 2003, he continued his studies at Helsinki Polytechnic Stadia and decided to take his game online. He made the first of what would be many online deposits and within two months had multi-tabled his $200 deposit into $20,000. It was then that he realized he had to take a break from school to focus on poker exclusively.

"The idea of being able to play anytime and more than one table at a time was unbelievable. I was hooked," says Antonius. "I started studying the game and my opponents even more and immersed myself in the game."

And he meant business. From March to December 2003, Antonius played 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and boosted his bankroll to an astonishing $80,000. His knowledge and skills increased too as he took on the best online players and learned from their play, and soon he was being hailed as one of the top online players in Europe.

During these years of poker playing Patrik's back had healed enough that he began to consider playing tennis again. Several of his Finnish tennis buddies were studying at U.S. schools on tennis scholarships, and he decided to try his luck as well. He applied and was awarded a one-year sports scholarship to Averett University in Virginia; he packed his bags and headed stateside.

His poker playing decreased significantly while he played tennis and attended classes, but it didn't affect his bankroll. Playing just one or two hours a day of $50/$100 heads-up and short-handed Hold'em netted the Finnish player $150,000. He upped his bankroll by about $100,000 when he added $5/$10 and $15/$25 Pot-Limit Omaha games to his repertoire, and topped it off by winning an online satellite to the 2004 World Series of Poker.

He completed his academic year but as soon as the semester was over Antonius jumped a plane to Vegas and never looked back.

"After spending six months in a tiny town in Virginia, Las Vegas was heaven," he admits on his Web site. "I met a lot of great people in Las Vegas, and some great players gave me a ton of confidence when they said I should really focus on my game, because they thought I had a lot of talent.

"It is one thing to think you are doing really well, but when some of the great players tell you that you are very tough, it was a huge confidence boost. I was being touted as one of the most successful online players in Europe."

Though he didn't cash in any events, Patrik left Vegas determined to improve his game, and to champion the online poker world while doing it. In his first few weeks home after moving back from Virginia, he doubled his bankroll playing short-handed $200/$400 Limit games online.

In 2005 he entered the live tournament circuit and scored a string of cashes. A 12th-place finish in the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure netted him just over $34,000, and his efforts in the WPT Bay 101 Shooting Stars of Poker landed him in 15th place with $40,000. He moved on to the WSOP, where he placed in three events, but it wasn't until later in the summer that he hit his stride.

In August he won the Ladbrokes Scandinavian Poker Championships in Stockholm, taking home nearly $70,000. The next month saw him place third in the EPT Barcelona event for $145,000 and in October he won the EPT Baden for $343,000, despite being five hours late for the event.

It was after these consecutive wins that Patrik decided to move to Vegas. He bought a house and began renovations that would take over a year and hundreds of thousands of dollars to complete. In the meantime, he settled into a suite at the Bellagio and continued playing high-stakes cash games and tournaments, both live and online.

In December 2005, he placed second to Doyle Brunson in the WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic at the Bellagio. He followed it up by joining Marcel Luske's Circle of Outlaws - a team of high-profile poker prodigies - and then signed with MartinsPoker.com, Swedish pro Martin de Knijff's poker room. It was also around this time that he met his fiancée, Maya.

With a set pre-tournament schedule that consists of sleeping and eating well, going to the gym and watching movies, it is no surprise Patrik continued to win in 2006. He cashed in eight international tournaments, including a ninth-place finish in the inaugural $50,000 WSOP H.O.R.S.E. event and a 15th-place finish in the $10,000 WSOP Pot-Limit Omaha Championship. He also placed in an additional three WSOP events as well as in two WPT events.

2006 was also a good year in Patrik's personal life. Maya became pregnant with their first child, Mila, who was born in May 2007, and the couple moved into their new home in Las Vegas. Since then, the family has decided to split its time between Monte Carlo, Monaco and Vegas, and they are currently in the process of settling down on the French Riviera.

Patrik continued his run on the poker circuit in 2007, cashing in the Aussie Millions, the WPT Five Star World Poker Classic, the WSOP and the WSOPE. He is regularly seen online playing at various poker rooms, including MartinsPoker, Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars, and can be found at the highest-stakes tables betting enormous sums of money, and winning big pots too.

His public profile has risen substantially as a result of his high-profile wins and celebrity good looks, and he has appeared on a number of TV shows and specials in the last several years. He was featured in Marcel Luske's instructional DVD, Poker: My Way, as well as in GSN's High Stakes Poker and, in 2007, he appeared in NBC's Poker After Dark series. He is set to play in Full Tilt Poker's Million Dollar Cash Game II and will join High Stakes Poker once again as well.

When not at the poker table, Antonius enjoys daily workouts and regular games of tennis as well as playing other sports. A former bad boy, the Finnish prodigy has relaxed into his role as a father and now spends much of his downtime playing with his daughter and hanging out with his fiancée. And for those fans interested in keeping up with the poker star, he started a blog detailing his personal life and tournament schedule in July 2007.

A regular participant in the Big Game at the Bellagio, Antonius is the youngest player ever asked to join the high-stakes cash game. He is considered one of the best heads-up players in the world and also one of the best mixed-game players. There can be no doubt the young Finn will go on winning and cashing on the poker circuit in years to come. The only question is, what event will he win next?

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