Tomgus456

I grinded the $0.01-$0.02 No Limit Hold’em cash games and never took any big risks

The mysterious Scandinavian is one of MTT poker’s brightest young stars….

He may be an anonymous figure but Tomgus456 has certainly been letting his skills at the poker table do his talking in 2008.
Very little is known about the mystery Scandinavian – it strongly appears that he is Finnish and living in Stockholm, Sweden – but his tournament streak this year has lifted him to #15 in the Pocket Fives Rankings and given him a reputation as a world-class MTT player.

A recent interview with P5’s shed a bit more light on Tomgus and his poker roots give hope to micro-stakes grinders everywhere:

“I started about two years ago with a €50 deposit on PokerStars. I grinded the $0.01-$0.02 No Limit Hold’em cash games and never took any big risks. I went up from there and to this day, it was my only deposit. After nine months, I had a $10,000 bankroll and after 18 months, I first tried playing in the $200-$400 Pot Limit Omaha games.”

Though the PLO cash games seem to take up a lot of his time (check out this crazy 4-way hand which he got the worst of), he can certainly play MTT’s with the best of them as well. He has outright victories in the vast majority of major online tournaments, though he is certainly best known for February’s win in the Sunday Million – good for $219,565. But this is just the tip of the iceberg for Tomgus – he has also taken down the Bodog $100k GTD ($25,000), Titan $50,000 GP Re-Buy ($13,000), Full Tilt $65k GTD ($22,418) & $33k GTD Re-Buy ($17,664), as well as the Stars $100 Re-Buy ($44,094), $200 NLH Heads-Up ($22,000), Nightly Hundred Grand ($19,683), Daily Eighty Grand ($15,008) & $50 Re-Buys ($12,831) in the space of under a year! By our estimation, he has made over $1million from online tournaments in 2008 and that doesn’t even taken into account his PLO cash game margins.

We would advise looking at the P5 interview as he also touches on interesting subjects such as tournament structures geared towards North American players (“You almost can’t play and have a normal life if you are going to bed at 7:00 in the morning every single day”) and the trouble of playing in Sweden (“you have to pay 30% on every pot or tournament cash. So if you get all in for $5,000 and win a $10,000 pot, you have to pay $3,000 and your net profit is really $2,000 minus the rake”.) However, despite his success he still doesn’t view himself as a professional player: another year like that and he will probably have to re-consider that statement.