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14 years ago

Ilari Sahamies Wins $500k and Biggest Pot in PokerStars History

The legendary Finn, Ilari ‘Ilari FIN’ Sahamies has been involved in massive poker pots and swings for years. Last night on PokerStars he won the largest pot ever on their site, a big $421k pot when he hit a flush on the river against two opponents. It helped propel him into a massive $500k winning session over 10 hours that saw him climb back into the black for 2011.

The high stakes games have been growing steadily ever since Black Friday forced some high stakes players who preferred Full Tilt Poker, to relocate outside the U.S. and begin play on PokerStars. Phil "MrSweets28" Galfond and Andrew Skjervøy’ Tobergsen were also playing in the game for hours.

Although the day ended with a massive profit, the day wasn't an easy one for Sahamies. He played an extended match with "socutiesf" at $100/$200 PLO and found himself down nearly $300k at one point. They decided to increase the stakes and moved to $200/$400 where Sahamies started to take control. Tobergsen joined them and eventually Galfond and other players would join them to continue the high stakes action.
The pivotal hand that created the biggest ever pot on PokerStars began innocently enough with three players seeing the flop, Sahamies, a short stacked Tobersen and "bernard-bb's" that saw only $4,600 go in pre-flop.

The flop came: Ks-2h-3s

"bernard-bb" checked, "Ilari FIN" bet $4,595, "Skjervoy" raised to $18,380, with both "Ilari FIN" and "bernard-bb" calling to make a $59,740 pot.

The turn card came: 9h

"bernard-bb" checked, "Ilari FIN" checked, "Skjervoy" pushed all-in for his remaining $10,428, "bernard-bb" raised to $91,019 and "Ilari FIN" called creating a $252,206 pot.

The river came: 3h

"bernard-bb" led out for the rest of his stack ($84,810) and "Ilari FIN" quickly called.

Sahamies turned over Kh-4c-Ah-6h for the nut flush he had hit on the river, after being behind to the top set of "bernard-bb" who had Ad-2d-As-7s
and "Skjervoy" mucked. Sahamies raked in $421,821.
Sahamies sucked out in the river for the biggest pot in PokerStars history and pushed back to around $500k in profits on the year after a $500k winning session last night.

Galfond also came out a big winner on the night taking home $368,956 over the past 24 hours of play. Torbergsen would be the biggest loser, dropping more than $658,000 and cutting his yearly profits by roughly a third to $1.4 million.

Interestingly, the pot doesn't come anywhere close to the massive pots that regularly changed hands over the years at Full Tilt Poker. The biggest being a $1,356,947 monster that Patrik Antonius won against Viktor “Isildur1” Blom back in 2009.