Player Focus: THEDONKEYNO1

Theo Jorgensen has been making serious waves both live and online in 2008.

With the Dane winning the WSOPE £5,000 PLO Event as well as his alias ‘THEDONKEYNO1’ becoming a fixture in the high stakes Omaha internet games, we thought it was time to check out the long time pro with an illustrious CV.

His success this year will have come as no surprise to most connoisseurs as Jorgensen, who started playing poker way back in 1993, has over $1.4million in live tournament winnings to put him up in 5th on the all-time Danish money list. Since taking down the 2004 European Seven Card Stud Championship in Baden for $125,248, his star has continued to rise with 2 EPT Final Tables, 3 WSOP Final Tables and now of course that illustrious bracelet to his name.

It was in 2006 that Jorgensen really started to make a name for himself when he final tabled the EPT French Open in Deuville, eventually coming 4th for $141,643 (it was a talented line-up that day with the likes of Ram Vaswani & eventual winner Mats Iremark also on the table). He also garnered some TV time (on Channel 5) in the PartyPoker Football & Poker Legends Cup in London, earning $50,000 for his victory (with fellow Dane Gus Hansen also in the final two). Another EPT Final Table soon followed in January 2007, during the Scandinavian Open in his home city of Copenhagen. He was eliminated in 4th (for $177,225) in painful circumstances with his Aces being cracked by Richard Toth’s Q9.

His WSOP career only started to take off last year, with a final table in the 2007 $5,000 Seven Card Stud event: he finished 5th for $46,530 (the same event in which Phil Ivey finished runner-up). There was further success across the pond in the inaugural WSOPE Main Event, where he made yet another final table, this time busting in 8th for $171,308. (Check out his elimination below, skip to 3:00):


Clearly the Empire is to his liking as he returned this year to become only the third Dane to win a World Series bracelet, taking down the £5,000 PLO from a stacked final table to earn the biggest cash of his career for a cool $397,617. He eliminated the likes of Jason Mercier, Chris Ferguson (with back to back quads) & Sorel Mizzi in heads-up play to cap a stunning performance and further enhance his reputation as one of the best all-round players in Europe.

But he was also brought to the attention of the online community when it was revealed recently that his online moniker is ‘THEDONKEYNO1’, who has been taking on the best Omaha players in the world in the biggest online ring games going. According to an interview with Danish site AceMag, a friend paid a loan of $10,000 into Jorgensen’s Full Tilt account and he took a shot at the $50/$100 PLO tables. After running well (and not considering bankroll management) he went straight up to the $200/$400 games and was tussling with the likes of Tom Dwan & David Benyamine heads-up – with great success. In April 2008 High Stakes DB show THEDONKEYNO1 to have been up over $215,000 on the PLO tables, making him one of the top 10 winners for the month. However, as he knows better than most, Omaha is a high variance game and almost as soon as he did the AceMag interview in June things started to turn; by July he even lost $32,000 in a heads-up game with NLH specialist Ariel ‘DaEvils’ Schneller. According to High Stakes News Schneller took an $80,000 pot with the nut straight before announcing:

DaEvils: lol
DaEvils: i gotta get the !@@# outta here i have no clue what i’m doing

(Check out a screenshot of the hand here).

Jorgensen is also a long-time sponsored player of gambling website Bet24 and has several tutorial videos on all forms of the game covered on You Tube. Given his record this year, it would be a good place for beginners to start learning.