Player Focus: bad_ip

Johnny Lodden, a leading online poker pro, is one of those people who seem addicted to the thrill of high-risk poker games, where huge amounts can be won or lost on the turn of a card.

The youthful Norwegian has gained a reputation as one of the world’s most successful online players but his real claim to fame is playing in the largest cash game in internet history.

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Epic battle

Last June, Lodden - playing under his online poker moniker “bad_ip” - locked horns with “Fast_Freddie” at a $200/$400 Heads-Up table. What started out as just another high stakes game turned into something special. By the end of their eight-hour struggle, an unprecedented stack of money was up for grabs as the two men vied for supremacy.

The game began with each player having $40,000 – the maximum buy-in - but more than 20 re-buys later the stash of cash sitting on the table raised to nearly $1 million. As the tension and stakes grew, more and more people started to watch – over 600 observers posted excited comments on the game’s message board as the battle swung first one way and then the other.

In the early stages of the epic battle, Lodden held the upper hand – he reportedly took a lead of more than $200,000 during the first few hours – but his opponent eventually prevailed, winning a pot of $465,451, the largest in online poker history, and walking away with more than $700,000 in total.

While mystery surrounds the identity of “Fast-Freddie” – some say he is World Series of Poker bracelet winner Freddy Deeb, while other reports dispute this fact – Lodden himself is an enigmatic type. He tries to retain a low profile even though he’s reportedly accumulated more than $7 million in high-stakes matches in the past year alone.

Offline winner

That’s quite an achievement for a guy still in his early 20s (his date of birth is recorded as 1985 or 1986) but the amount of money he’s pulling down is less of a surprise when you learn that, before his showdown with “Fast_Freddie”, Lodden held the previous record for the biggest hand in online history, a $357, 256 pot played against “I_Grind_on_u”. This is a guy happy to match any of the biggest players out there, cent for cent, as the following anecdote suggests.

The story goes that Johnny was being abused by an American during an Internet ring game. The guy laid into him, telling Lodden he was a smart-arsed kid and challenged him to a heads up game - for all of his bankroll.

So they went to a private heads-up table and the American sat down first and put up $190,000. Johnny sat down and put up $5,900,000. That's right $5.9 million. And then he typed into the chat box: "I thought you said you had a bank roll!" The Yank got up and left.

Away from poker Lodden is a keen golfer and also likes to bet on sport. He follows football and is reportedly a Man Utd fan. On his blog (www.JohnnyLodden.com), Lodden says of betting on the golf course with his friends one day: "A good golf session for me - only 2k down".

When you're one of the world's biggest online players, it's peanuts.


View bad_ip's PVi Profile here


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