Johnny Lodden
Johnny Lodden is a regular face at the European Poker Tour tournaments and is part of Team PokerStars, but not many people know his poker background and what has made him such a popular poker player. In this article we take a look at how he blasted through the online poker cash-games to become the legend he now is.
The Norwegian was born in a coastal town called Jorpeland in 1985.
As he grew up he became obsessed with card games and at only 15-years old he was already playing poker for real money against his friends. It was a friend at school who introduced Lodden to the world of internet poker. Lodden was fascinated with online poker and almost daily he watched his friend play long sessions. After months of watching the action, Lodden decided it was time for him to create his own account and try his luck at the online poker games.
He created accounts at various European poker sites, as well as PokerStars. He was known as ‘bad_ip’ on most European poker sites, and went by the name ‘Lars-Magne’ on PokerStars. He began by playing Limit Hold’em because that is what he had watched his friend play for several months, but he quickly transitioned to No-Limit Hold’em where he found great success playing the cash games and sit-and-goes. By twenty-years old Lodden was playing the biggest games available online.
He became a feared sit and go player by winning hundreds of thousands playing the $5,000 heads-up sit and goes at PokerStars. He was also playing the largest cash games available online on the Prima Poker network which had $200/$400 heads-up tables. This was where his legendary status started as he broke the record for the largest pot won in an online poker game when he won $357,256 from player ‘I_Grind_on_u’. In 2006 he found himself on the losing end of this record however, when he lost a $465,461 pot to online player ‘Fast_Freddie’.
Losing that pot was only the start of his downfall however and in 2008 Lodden admitted in an interview that he was in fact broke.
In order to continue playing he was forced to seek help and was staked by a friend. He began grinding, multi-tabling at the $10/$20 NLHE tables in order to rebuild his bankroll and has since suggested that he will not play such high stakes games again.
Not only did Lodden become a force to be reckoned with online, but he became a regular on the live poker tournament circuit, mainly for the European Poker Tour stops. To date Lodden has cashed 8 times at the EPT for a combined $245,866.
So far his biggest live tournament cash was at the 2008 World Series of Poker Europe in London when he narrowly missed out on a final table appearance, busting in 11th place for $98,756. This result earned him even more exposure to the poker world and online poker giants PokerStars signed Lodden to a two-tournament sponsorship deal for the next two EPT events. Lodden immediately impressed by making the final table of the 2008 EPT Budapest where he finished 8th for $66,578. Next was EPT Prague where he could only manage 43rd-place cash for $10,647. These results impressed PokerStarsand Lodden continues to represent them as part of Team PokerStars Pros and plays on the site under his new alias ‘johnnylodden’.
Most recently, Lodden final tabled the popular PokerStars Sunday Million where he finished in 5th place for $72,616. He busted to eventual winner ‘caio_pimenta’ after moving all-in with A-K and failing to improve against his opponents pocket Kings.
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