The independent high stakes online poker monitor, High Stakes Data Base, reported on the 2013 performance of top high stakes poker professionals on the Full Tilt and Pokerstars sites this week, singling out German ace Niklas “ragen70” Heinecker as the biggest earner throughout the year.
Heinecker started the year at a leisurely pace but soon went into high gear, playing a total of 65,577 hands in 506 sessions against some of the most skilled, predatory and competitive players on the internet.
His opponents could have included feared and respected names like Alexander “PostFlopAction” Kostritsyn, Kyle “cottonseed1” Hendon, Tom “durrr” Dwan and Viktor “Isildur1” Blom, among many others.
Heinecker, who came in sixth in 2012 with only a sixth of his earnings this year, was streets ahead of his nearest rivals in the top three spots.
Ben “Bttech86” Tollerene was his closest competitor, playing 1,358 sessions to amass annual winnings of $2.99 million across 117,730 hands.
Third-placed Alex “Ireadyoursoul” Millar won $2.03 million in 300 sessions and 32,976 hands.
The HSDB reports that $4.19 million of Heinecker’s winnings came from draw games, with the rest from NLHE action.
The biggest winner of 2012, Ben “Sauce1234” Sulsky, underperformed in 2013 and ended up as the sixth-biggest loser. He played 64,259 hands in 597 sessions and ended the year down $1,473,088.
But the biggest losers in 2013 took a scary hammering and were led by the unfortunate Gus “The Great Dane” Hansen in his second year of featuring prominently on the “biggest loser” list.
Hansen ended the year $8,461,472 down despite playing 171,743 hands in 1,627 sessions and losing double his total loss of around $4.2 million suffered in 2012.
He now holds the dubious honour of online poker’s all-time biggest loser at $14.89 million, a world apart from the all-time biggest winner, Phil Ivey, who can boast earnings of $19,24 million despite a bad 2013 in which he is down $2.44 million over the year.
The other two players on the “biggest losers top three” list were “MalACEsia”, who was down $3.77 million after 42,742 hands in 292 sessions, and “samrostam” who played in 757 sessions for 82,945 hands but lost $3.46 million in 2013.
Biggest pot of the year was probably recorded in February 2013 when “patpatpanda” took down a $552,883 monster playing in a $250/$500 Pot-limit Omaha game. Over the year that win saved him sinking further down the loser list, but he was on it nevertheless.