Jani Vilmunen – KObyTAPOUT

Jani lost 180k in one hole…. and I think he might have finished close to even on the two days

Jani Vilmunen is a PLO legend and certainly doesn’t shy away from any high stakes action….

Jani Vilmunen, aka ‘KObyTAPOUT’, is yet another high stakes Finnish pro with a hell of a lot of gamble.

Full Tilt railers will probably be well aware of his screen-name: Vilmunen is widely regarded as one of the best Omaha players on the site despite putting in far fewer hours than most of his opponents. In 2007 he was the 3rd biggest PLO winner on the site, making over $1.5million, despite playing just over 22,000 hands: to put this into perspective, Niki Jedlicka & David Benyamine (the 2 biggest winners of the year) put in 64,000 & 167,000 hands respectively.

Obviously you don’t make profit margins like that without being hyper-aggressive which Vilmunen undoubtedly is: it is also not surprising that he is part of the high stakes Finnish ‘crew’ including the likes of Patrik Antonius, Ilari ‘Ziigmund’ Sahamies & Sami ‘LarsLuzak’ Kelopuro. The man from the southern coastal town of Porvoo has plenty more strings to his bow, however, and when he is not in the $200/$400 games he is usually either making some outrageous prop bets or making a splash in the live tournament scene. He has live prizes of over $215,000, the highlight of which was undoubtedly a final table of the $10,000 PLO at the 2006 WSOP, eventually finishing 7th for $81,968 (fellow Omaha high stakes player Rafi ‘howisitfeellike’ Amit was also at the table). Poker Listings placed him in the list of their ‘Top 5 PLO Contenders at the 2008 WSOP’ & ‘Top 5 Finns to watch at the 2008 WSOP’ lists – though he made just one cash ($32,166 for 322nd in the Main Event), in August Vilmunen took down the €1,000 PLO at the Finnish Poker Championships for $53,007 to prove he is still one of the best Omaha players around in any format.

Of course, you can’t be chummy with the likes of Antonius & Sahamies without being a true gambler and he has been known to take on several six-figure bets on the golf course and poker table. In Antonius’ blog entry for March he noted how Vilmunen got drunk (after 3 beers) and was bragging about his PLO game, which of course instantly led to a heads-up challenge by Ziigmund for what Patrik describes as ‘a large amount of money’ (we assume at least six figures – see the full post here). And Brandon Adams also had a story from Australia in his January blog:

“So the two days after the Cash Game I played golf with Antonius, KobyTapOut, and Robert Alexander… It was for sure the most insane golf gambling I’ve ever seen… on the last hole of day two, KobyTapOut (Jani) lost 180k in one hole when he got a par vs Robert’s birdie. And I think he might have finished close to even on the two days. There was just a huge amount of gambling in two days, everything from Chinese at dinner to tossing quarters to betting on the Australian (Patrik won $105,000 bettting props at tennis matches last night).”

This year, Vilmunen again hasn’t put as many hours in online as his high stakes rivals but you can be sure that any game with ‘KObyTAPOUT’ is going to see serious action.