Ilari ‘Ziigmund’ Sahamies
Best known by his Full Tilt Poker alias ‘Ziigmund’, Ilari Sahamies is one of the most popular high stakes poker players in the world, both online and live. Ziigmund was born in Helsinki, Finland, in 1983 where he grew up as a budding sports star excelling in sports such as soccer and wrestling. As he grew older and became a teenager his interest shifted to billiards where he also excelled, winning the Finnish Junior Championships twice. His first interest in poker came when he was 15 years old and he watched a programme about Texas Hold’em on television. He chatted to his billiard friends about poker and got invited to a home poker game – Patrik Antonius’ home!
Both players became friends and regularly played together with Ziigmund often skipping school in order to play poker. He eventually finished his studies at 18 years old, but unlike the rest of his friends who went on to college, Ziigmund headed straight to the Grand Casino Helsinki to play Pot-Limit Omaha. He blasted through the stakes at the casino and became a well-known player in Finland. In 2002 he discovered how popular internet poker was becoming and created accounts at most European poker sites. He began at $50 NLHE and PLO ring games where he found instant success, but due to poor bankroll management he found himself broke several times. This didn’t discourage him though and he continued playing grinding his way up the stakes. He would multi-table for up to 15 hours a day and found his bankroll ballooning thanks to his hyper-aggressive style of play. After dominating the high stake games on the European poker sites for so long, Ziigmund created an account at Full Tilt Poker in 2006 taking on the best high stake players in the world. This included Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan, Phil Ivey, Gus Hansen, and many others. Despite such tough opposition Ziigmund has proved how good he is and can still be found on the site at the highest stake games.
Ziigmund has almost $500k in live tournament winnings despite being a cash game player. Even when it is WSOP time he opts to play in the big cash games instead of trying to win a bracelet. This past summer Ziigmund revealed he played two of the biggest pots he has ever played before. The pots took place at Bobby’s Room where he was playing some of the richest high stake poker players. He won one of the pots and lost the other. The pot he won was worth a massive $1.7 million, however the pot he lost was to his close friend Patrik Antonius and despite running it twice, Antonius walked away with the $2.4 million pot!
Ziigmund also plays at a popular new poker room called PowerPoker where he plays in various tournaments which have a bounty on him. So if you knock out Ziigmund you receive a bounty prize straight into your account, just remember to read a PowerPoker review before you join the site.
|
