Review of online High Stakes in 2008, Part 3: Pot Limit Omaha

• Author: Qid
• Filed under: Brian Rast, David Benyamine, Gus Hansen, Guy Laliberte, High Stakes News, High Stakes Poker, High Stakes Results, ICallSoWhat, Ilari Sahamies, Lady Marmelade, LarsLuzak, Online poker, Poker, Sami Kelopuro, Tom Dwan, Ziigmund, durrrr, noataima, slaktarn, tsarrast
• Date: Jan 2,2009

Pot Limit Omaha was the most popular poker game online at Full Tilt Poker, as top players played six-figure amounts of hands in PLO tables. David Benyamine dominated the PLO games and managed to win almost $8 million dollars in 2008!

PLO winnings (and Erica) put a smile on David’s face!

Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond was the second biggest winner in PLO with winnings of $4.532.039. Other players didn’t come even close to Galfond, as third biggest winner “ICallSoWhat” won $2.184.318,15.

ICallSoWhat was at one point of the year the most recognizable figure in PLO tables, when he went through a huge upswing and won around $4 millions in a short amount of time. The downswing came for him too, like every other poker player, and he hasn’t been playing high stakes PLO since. We’ll see if he returns to play PLO at Full Tilt in 2009.

Another PLO player who had almost the same destiny like ICallSoWhat was a Swedish player “slaktarn”, who managed to win the PLO Heads-Up Championship this summer at Full Tilt Poker and also dominated the ring PLO games for a while. After a downswing he also disappeared from the tables and ended the year with winnnings of $653.036,80.

Guy “I lost millions, but i don’t care” Laliberte.

Guy Laliberte was the biggest donator in PLO games like in NL Hold’em. His rumored nicknames “lady marmelade”, “noataima” and “patatino” combined total loss of $7.9 millions! If mysterious “elmariachimacho” is his nickname too, you can put $837k more in his losses. No biggie.

Gus Hansen donated his winnings from Omaha Hi/lo tables effectively to PLO games, as he lost second biggest amount of money, total of $3.776.024. Third biggest loser, Brian “tsarrast” Rast lost only 1/3 of that, 1.288.728 dollars.

Many big pots were played in PLO last year. Here are two biggest:

Tom “durrrr” Dwan beats the draw of Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies with his quads ($644k).

Sami “LarsLuzak” Kelopuro hits the nuts on the river and makes an easy call against Sahamies ($637k).

I’m sure that in 2009 all the numbers will be bigger, after introducing $500/$1000 PLO tables in December. Maybe Full Tilt will add even bigger tables than those during this year. A pot of $1 million is not in the distant future!

Sources: pokerista.fi, HSDB