Stammdogg: Player Update: January 2009

Stammdogg playing on PokerStars, where he has been crushing the $100 Re-Buys

It seems we profiled Keven Stammen at the wrong time.

Almost exactly after Steve Hall caught up with ‘Stammdogg’ in Vegas back in March ’08, he proceeded to go on the online streak of his life, taking his prizes on PokerStars & Full Tilt combined to over $2million and shooting into the PocketFives Top 10 Rankings.

To think that the Coldwater, Ohio native was installing basements in his home state just a few years ago is staggering when you see what he has achieved in the last year or so. In April 08 he took down the first of 2 Stars $100 Re-Buys in the space of just 6 weeks (for $31,598), the second coming in June for $16,015 – according to our estimations that’s the TENTH time he has taken down the tournament! Stammen followed this up with runner-up finishes in the Nightly Hundred Grand ($21,250) and – you guessed it – the $100 Re-Buys ($33,541) in July before placing 3rd in the $250k GTD for one of his biggest ever scores of $58,700.

But this all paled in comparison to his achievements in the first 3 weeks of November. Stammen achieved not one, but 2 Sunday Million final tables in the space of 21 days, finishing 5th & 6th for a combined total of over $94,000! And on Full Tilt he final tabled the $1k Monday (5th, $24,500) and went extremely deep in FTOPS Event #9 ($300 NLH), eventually busting in 4th for a career best cash of $84,578. That’s over $200,000 made during 4 tournaments in just 3 weeks to produce an hourly rate anyone could be proud of.

Stammdogg shot back up the P5 rankings (he was a former monthly leader board winner in October 07) and after final tabling the $1k Monday again (3rd, $43,920) & another second in the $100 Re-Buys ($30,000) in January 09 he made it to No#1 in the Official Poker Rankings leader board for PokerStars. This is a phenomenal achievement in itself when you consider the level of competition across the site in the high-stakes MTT games (*OPR leader boards are calculated over the previous 120 days of play).

If there is one blotch on his CV, however, it is surely in live poker, where despite going deep in several deep events has yet to cash for over $23,000. Progress was made at the 2008 WSOP when he made 4 cashes and also pocketed $15,000 for a 101st at the 2009 PCA Main Event. Given his online credentials, it can only be a matter of time before a major offline score makes its way to his bank account.

In an interview with Bluff magazine in April ’08, Stammen said he thought he was down $400-$500k playing BlackJack during his lifetime – even with that kind of loss rate he would still be healthily in the green due to his online poker achievements and that more than anything else shows how consistent Stammdogg has been at the toughest tournament tables on the net.