This is a tale of terrible bankroll management. Do not read this story and put it all on the line, or deposit a few hundred dollars to move up several stake levels.
Against all odds and against all the rules of bankroll management, this Canadian seems to have beaten the high-stakes games and escaped before giving it back.
The story was broken by Poker Bounty on their YouTube channel.
Every so often, a poker player comes along who is willing to put aside the rules of good bankroll management and lay it all on the line for a shot at the big time.
One such player was XBLINK, who went on a winning streak at Ultimate Bet in 2009. Later on, he came to be known as XWINK on Full Tilt Poker. This is the legendary poker story of XWINK and how he became a millionaire in less than four days.[Music]But before his epic run, things were not looking that good for XBLINK.
Eleven dollars – that's all he had in his poker account after another day of getting destroyed at the tables. Before that, he had deposited $500 nearly 20 times but was not able to get anything going, always running bad and tilting.
With his last 11 dollars, he thought of playing a tournament, and if he lost that, he'd deposit again. If this is the way you think about your last 11 dollars online, well then, congratulations: you are a degenerate poker player. But then, something happened—something that the online poker world had never seen.
He described his run on Two Plus Two forums as follows: XBLINK wins the $11 tournament on Ultimate Bet for a payday of $750 in November of 2009.
The next day, he starts playing slightly higher stakes. He plays away for a few days, moving from one-two to five-ten, and his bankroll also moved up from four thousand dollars to sixteen thousand dollars. For the next two days, he was bouncing between twenty thousand and sixty thousand, playing ten-twenty PLO. He started day 5 with 25/50 PLO, and his bankroll crossed one hundred thousand.
By day six, he was up to 200/400 PLO and playing no-limit hold'em when there were no PLO tables running. Then, it was enough for the forums and even the Ultimate Bet blog to take note of the meteoric rise of XBLINK, and the fact that XBLINK was willing to talk back to the poker public on Two Plus Two forums was enough for most people to decide that XBLINK was going to be the next big star, getting the same treatment that Isildur1 and Durr had before him.
But then, a funny thing happened. XBLINK stopped playing on Ultimate Bet almost entirely since April of 2nd's big run. People also made accusations that XBLINK was a superuser; however, none of these claims have, of course, ever been proven.
It turns out, apparently, that the 20-year-old from Vancouver did have some saving skills after all. He told the Two Plus Two forum lurkers that he had actually cashed out almost 1 million on Ultimate Bet, approximately the amount he was still up, and simply quit playing on the site, save for the occasional small session. It was assumed that XBLINK had just had enough of being a degenerate and had fled the high-stakes world.
But, as fellow degenerates know, the itch to come back and make a big score can be a lure too strong for anyone to deny, and XBLINK came back onto Full Tilt Poker as XWINK.
To say XWINK was a complete stranger to Full Tilt's high-stakes tables isn't totally accurate. He made a brief appearance back in mid-2010, where he just won over $200,000 between May and June, playing no-limit hold'em. At the time, his presence sparked a decent amount of interest due to the fact that his username, XWINK, was startlingly similar to the young Canadian player XBLINK. If you look at the stats of these accounts, you will notice that both accounts played with a similar style. When it comes to high-stakes poker, speculation heated up considerably at the beginning of March of 2011, however, XWINK came out of nowhere to peak at $2 million after winning huge sums from some of the biggest names in online poker, as he took on all players heads-up at all stakes of PLO, up to and including 501/1000.
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His ascent had actually started at the low-mid stakes a couple of days previously, but his first 2011 appearance on High Stakes DB came on Tuesday, 2nd March, where he was the day's 7th biggest winner, taking over $102,000 from 1.5 thousand hands of PLO. It was between the third and fourth, however, where XWINK's activity really came to light, as he took on the likes of Tom Dwan, Rui Cao, Gus Hansen, and David Benfield one after the other at the highest stakes online, making a killing in the process.
His biggest wins on 3rd March came against two full-time Red Pros, Rui Cao and David Benfield, with Cao donating $610,000 and Benfield $560,000. In total, the Canadian player won a little over $1.2 million on 3rd of March. It was more of the same the following day, as XWINK won another $447,000.
At one point during the day, his four-day total eclipsed $2 million—an amount that marked the peak of the hyper-aggressive player's climb. However, the wheels came off his joyride after playing 3,211 hands of 300/600 PLO and 500/1000 cap PLO against Cole South, Phil Ivey, Daniel Cates, and Noah Boeken, in which he lost $1.2 million, losing 60% of his Full Tilt Poker bankroll in a single day. In a chat with Jungleman during his losing session, XWINK also admitted that he was tilting.
Around the same time, it was finally confirmed by the man himself that he was actually the same 20-year-old Canadian pro who had stormed to huge success as XBLINK at Ultimate Bet, as once again he took to the Two Plus Two account to confirm a story with the amusing cliff notes below:
"Four thousand to two million in four days. Did this with my excellent bankroll management skills. Lost $1.2 million in one day. Sit around with remainder, probably cash out half a million dollars or something. Lastly, will continue to play to entertain you guys."
One thing for sure is that many pros have been criticizing his level of skill, which accounts for the fact so many players were lining up to play him. Also, the fact XWINK played a maximum of 243 hands at the same table before moving to the next indicated strongly he was taking a hit-and-run approach to the game. In fact, an online chat between Durr and a fellow player went as follows:
It wasn't over just yet for XWINK, however, as over the next few days, he managed to win back close to $900,000, with wins over Boeken, Ivey, and Tom Dwan.
However, over the next week or so, XWINK gradually gave back most of his profits to the high-stakes community. But it looks like he did indeed withdraw around half a million dollars, as he stated in his Two Plus Two post, as he continued to play but at considerably lower stakes. And his Full Tilt account, unplayed at high stakes since mid-2011, is still up $457,000 at 25/50 and above. Seeing his exploits, many people believed that he was the next Isildur1, but that was not the case.
XWINK disappeared from the high-stakes tables of Full Tilt Poker in July of 2011 and was never seen again.
