Patrik Antonius

One of the most winning players in the history of online poker and the star of all the major poker TV shows.

Hardly the most popular poker player from Finland, he used to work as a model and dreamed of becoming a professional tennis player, but after his 19th birthday, he plunged into online poker. $200 in his account after 2 months turned into $30,000, and very soon Patrik was playing the biggest game online, often 12 hours a day. In his own words, from 2002 to 2005 he did not have a single losing month.

In 2005 the whole poker world learned Antonius's name. He finished third at EPT Barcelona that year, won EPT Baden and made over a million from the Las Vegas WPT. He made the Full Tilt Poker team in 2008 and when Isildur came to the high stakes tables, Antonius was his main opponent. Records were also broken as Patrik won a $1.35 million pot during those matches, the biggest in online poker history for more than 10 years.

Patrik has also been a regular on the major poker TV shows, appearing on High Stakes Poker, the Million Dollar Cash Game and Poker After Dark in front of thousands of viewers. But the era of solvers and young GTO players did not impress Antonius: he has not played online for a long time, after having recorded a profit of around $30 million. In 2018 he successfully returned to live poker and even became one of the participants in the relaunched High Stakes Poker.

Famous quotes

I used to take my winnings for granted, thinking it was just a matter of time before I had to finish every session in the black. Losing, on the other hand, was very painful for me. I find them very difficult to get used to, even when you have a lot of money. It helped that I was young and playing poker every day.

When I first started, poker had a different image and you had to explain that you were not doing anything illegal. Now I'm comfortable saying I play poker, but I feel uncomfortable being made some kind of celebrity. A lot of people just don't understand what the role of luck is in poker.

Thanks to poker I've been able to fulfil all my dreams, visited the most beautiful places in the world, and met a lot of wonderful people. I don't know of any other activity like it: poker has a perfect balance between skill and luck and that's what makes it appealing to everyone. Poker brings people together and helps them understand themselves.