The Weekend Report

By Philip Tuck

The Scandinavians rule all weekend

This weekend belonged to the Scandinavians by a long way in the big cash games. Illari ‘Ziigmund’ Sahamies won just under half a million dollars playing both $200/$400 Pot Limit Omaha, as well as substantial sessions playing $2,000/$4,000 limit Omaha hi/lo. This, combined with his last few weeks performances have started to make serious dents in the substantial losses that he had occurred at points this year.

The other big winning Scandinavian was Patrick Antonius. He won $325,000 playing a combination of H.O.R.S.E, Pot Limit Omaha and Omaha hi/lo. This win puts both Ziigmund and Patrick up close to a one million dollar profit for the month.

Other big winners included Phil Ivey, who won just under a quarter of a million dollars (seriously does he ever lose?), John Juanda ( $190,000), trex313 ( $150,000) and Gus Hansen ( $100,000). All of these players are consistent big winners online, so it is perhaps not surprising to see them all post six figure profits.

The biggest loser this weekend was ironically the biggest online Omaha winner of all time, David Benyamine. He dropped just under $800,000 over the course of the weekend, predominantly in the Omaha hi/lo and H.O.R.S.E games. This is probably not much to worry about, as David employs an extremely aggressive and swingy style, and his track record more than shows what a great player he is.

Other big losers included ‘slaktarn’ who effectively lost all his winnings from the $25,000 buy in heads up Omaha tournament of last week, dropping $542,000 before finally calling it a day, ‘world1969' who lost over $300,000 at the the Omaha hi/lo tables and Steve Sung, who dropped $300,000 playing in all the games running.

With Guy Laliberte not showing his face this weekend, we soon returned to Omaha and the mixed games as the pros battled it out for that monster score. Hopefully Guy can make a welcome return and we can get the big $500/$1,000 hold’em game running again...