Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies is from Finland. is one of the most aggressive pot-limit Omaha players around. Coming from Finland and learning poker together with another great player Patrik Antonius can help a lot. Ilari and Patrik met playing pool (Ilari is also a two time national champion in pool) and decided to start playing poker together.
Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies started to go regularly to Helsinkis Grand Casino to lose his money. Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies managed to get money for his new hobby by working at a gas-stations, construction-yards and even as an telephone-operator. First year didn’t go too well - but by the end of the second year he managed to book winnings for around $100,000.
Nowadays we can find "Ziigmund" playing at the highest level of competition. "Ziigmund" can be found regularly playing at the big pot-limit Omaha tables at Full Tilt Poker where the blinds are $200/400. "Ziigmund" will never back down from a challenge - he will play (and has played numerous times) anyone especially heads-up. He has fought with the likes of Phil Ivey and David Benymine.
Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies is dominating the high stakes cash games on Full Tilt Poker as of late, and is currently the biggest winner for the month of September. The volatile Finnish player is up almost $1.9 million dollars for the month of September over a total of 13,869 hands (according to HighStakesDB.com).
With his recent performance, "Ziigmund" has dug himself out of a million dollar plus hole and is now up just over $600k on the year. "Ziigmund" typically makes most of his money from Pot Limit Omaha. September has been no different, as "Ziigmund" has made just over $900k from the high stakes PLO games that have been running on the site. Surprisingly though, Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies has done very well in the high stakes NLHE and Omaha Hi/Lo games, making an additional $900k+ in those two games.
Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies also visited The Big Game this summer - booking some nice winnings. He was playing (of course) drunk and fearlessly. Barry Greenstein complimented Ilari by telling that he thinks Ilari is one of the best pot-limit Omaha players in the world. Many call him also “The Omaha Kid”.
Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies is also quite a characted at the online-tables. He can mock people and tell it straight to their faces - for example calling Gus Hansen “the biggest fish online” or David Benyamine as a “a fat gay guy”.
Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies is also know for favouring coinflips - he tries to get people to do coinflips for huge amounts. Largest were against Phil Ivey when they agreed to do first a series of coinflips for $40,000 each and in the end they went for $80,000 flip.
Quote from Ziigmund: “Playing it safe will never get you to the top. More important is that you have the balls to bet at the right time. If you want to succeed you need to have a gamblers attitude”
Official Blog
Ziigmund Down $3,000,000