Player Update: Ziigmund

Congratulations to Ilari ‘Ziigmund’ Sahamies who has been named Online Player of the Year for 2008 at the Scandinavian Poker Awards in Copenhagen.

According to High Stakes DB, the Finn made over $1.6million from the Full Tilt cash games last year – more than any other Scandinavian player. In his blog for Coinflip.com, he said of the award: “I was genuinely excited about it, it felt great to pick up the trophy, and I want to thank everybody who voted for me”. In true Ziigmund fashion, he also commented on his great friend Patrik Antonius picking up Live Player of the Year: “The Live Player of the Year is of course the Prince of Monaco who NATURALLY couldn't come to the ceremony cause he was too busy stretching and getting electric massages. I'm talking about Batuun Anttuunius in case someone doesn't already know.” The award was presented by Johnny Lodden, with a video attached below:



For those that don’t know, Sahamies is an online legend who regularly frequents the $500/$1,000 games, playing anyone who is sitting at PLO, NLH and the ‘Mixed HA’ games. He also had some live success in January, coming 2nd in the Helsinki Freeze-out Main Event for $170,434. Several onlookers were apparently aware that ‘Ziggy’ had been drinking a lot during the tournament and when it came to heads-up play he was, well, on his way. One Two Plus Two poster said that: “Ilari was drinking really heavily and it seemed that he had almost no interest about winning. He drank many shots, drinks and red wine…. Then Ilari just pushed his stack into middle before cards were even dealt, dealer then said to him he can't do that and dealt cards and Ilari immediately pushed his chips into middle and put cards face up 99 to his opponents, who immediately called with AA and won the hand and whole tournament.”

Ziigmund is already well known in the online community, largely thanks to his chatbox berating of other players at the table which have become legendary (check out the long-running Two Plus Two thread here). Personal favorites include comments to Gus Hansen such as:

Gus Hansen: bad but lucky
Ziigmund: Uncle Gustav
Ziigmund: Gus romanian eurovisionsinger Hansen cant play
poker
Gus Hansen: dont cry Ziggy
Ziigmund: Gustav "RAZZKING"Hansen
Ziigmund: Gustav likes to sing karaoke with his gipsy friends

And this with Antonius:

Ziigmund: what is this?
Patrik Antonius: 20k flips
Patrik Antonius: your best game
Ziigmund: :)

(Ilari is one of the biggest 'flippers' on Full Tilt).

He is also appearing in the long awaited Season 5 of High Stakes Poker, scheduled to be released to our TV screens in the near future. Congratulations, Ilari, and we are sure to be seeing a lot more of you in 2009.