One of the predictions for the finishing Poker Masters high roller series in ARIA came true. Back in January 2017 Fedor Holz told that this is going to be the year of Steffen Sontheimer, a young German player who’s been nicknamed “Goose” by his friends.

Couple of days ago Jean-Robert Bellande, super high roller cash games regular (who is perceived as fish), posted in his Twitter account a remarkable photo of a big game from Aria (we have already published it on our Facebook page):

There is only one tournament that tops everything, including start of World Series of Poker. It is ARIA Super High Roller Bowl with buy-in of $300,000! It is one of the most expensive, spectacular and famous tournaments in the world. Only poker elite plays here, players who are the best of the best. There are no fishes, almost all the players are semi-gods. There are exceptions though.

The things are Germany is the country, where strongest super high rollers live in. For the second time in a row, champions belt of ARIA Bowl goes to the resident of this country. In 2016,  Rainer Kempe triumphed here, and Russian online high roller Timofey “Trueteller” Kuznetsov even used to be a chip leader after one of the playing days.

New Year holidays came a little bit earlier for poker players as in the biggest high stakes database HighStakesDB opened a public access to closed-before accounts of the highrollers on some unknown reason in the middle of December. Now we all know how much really did Red baron, Alexander Kostritsyn, Ragen70, Ben Tolleren, Nanonoko and many other top pros earn.

HighStakesDB shattered pink glasses of many. The website suddenly decided to open the graphs of the players to the public eyes, though no permission was granted to them. Still, we have an opportunity to know how much did the most famous online players earn this year and throughout their careers.

During the previous year, Russian high roller Alexander “joiso” Kostritsyn earned about $1.5 million and was the only one to show a seven-digit result in the positive range. All this became known through HighStakesDB that opened for public access the previously closed accounts of most of online high rollers.

It stands to mention the significant decline in activity at the highest stakes. At the moment, online high rollers can only play on PokerStars at very castrated stakes (as compared with the old Full Tilt), and the field itself has tightened significantly while big fishes now deserve to be listed in a database of rare species.

Everyone loves to count other people's money. It is bad taste, but that is human nature. Poker is all about money, after all, so little wonder. Let us cut to the case. Do you want to know what bankrolls the world’s top live and online players command? Do you want to know how much they make a year? We will use the help of Douglas Polk, one of the world’s top online high rollers.

This is by far not the first time we have talked about the earnings of MTT and cash players. We have tried to figure out if it is hard being a tournament player, compared potential profits in the two disciplines, and once even tried to find out who won the more money in a given year, live or online high rollers.

Monaco Extravaganza in incredible interiors and neat costumes ended. Elton Tsang defeated Russian businessman Anatoly Gurtovoy heads-up and received €11,111,111! There were 26 participants in the event, less than expected.

When acrobatic tricks of Guy Laliberte (they made a real performance on the tournament opening), when the price of Monaco Albert II told his speech; when they all gathered in luxurious Casino de Monte-Carlo hall – the tournament with the most expensive buy-in in history of poker began.

The spectacle was extraordinary.

One of the grandest events in the poker history already started (on October, 13^th). At least if we’re talking of charity events. Almost a week of high roller tournaments with buy-ins of €10,000 to €1,000,000 and cash games with rocket high stakes and €300/hour rake.

The upcoming event is exclusively for businessmen and recreational players, no professionals. This decision was made by the organizer of the event Guy Laliberte there were more pros than amateurs on the latest One Drop event, so the latter had no point in participating in such an expensive event against opponents this strong.

One of the major peculiarities of online poker is that players remain relatively anonymous. When you are playing cash games or tournaments in poker clubs – you will be identified in the future this way or another. But when you only see an avatar, some random nickname and country of the player – it is easy to create atmosphere of mystery around yourself.

We seldom write about online poker. It is not our profile. However, sometimes there are interesting stories there. And it doesn’t make sense to leave them without our attention: why limit ourselves with some unnecessary borders.

Besides, the topic of the article is somehow connected with live poker as well.

The time of the cult poker TV shows where the best players had million buy-ins are long gone. But the participants of those games are still there – in the best clubs of Las Vegas. Who would have thought, it is summer of 2016, and Negreanu, Hansen, Harman, Antonius, Brunson and other legends are playing in Bellagio at $2000-$4000 stakes.

The time didn’t go backwards; those games are now closed to public and TV viewers. Although players doesn’t try to keep any secrets.

Daniel Negreanu in his blog told another story of the big poker world and also remembered the incredibly tough game where he lost his first million of dollars.

Who would have thought of rise of a young man who is able to repeat (or even exceed) an unbelievable upstreak of Daniel Coleman: Dan earned  $22,389,481 in 2014, having won $1,000,000 The Big One for One Drop. Total prize money of German wunderkind is less but only in actual figures.

“I started to play when Antonio Esfandiari won his first One Drop. I was really obsessed by poker back then,” Holz remembers. And that was just four (!) years ago. Just like yesterday.

Famous one million buy-in tournament The Big One for One Drop is back in the new format!  Poker festival One Drop Extravaganza will take place in Monte Carlo on October, 13-17: expensive cash games, tournaments and €1,000,000 Main Event. And major change: no pros allowed!

The founder of charity organization One Drop Guy Laliberte once again invites super high rollers to the biggest event this year, place of action is Monaco, Casino de Monte-Carlo. Pro players are welcomed as well, but the participation in the Main Event is prohibited to them.

Should one eliminate respect from poker – there will be only market relations. Soulless chips trade, pure competition with no conscience involved. Limit Hold’em is pretty close to that. It is quite regular to use sitting scripts at top stakes for a long time. There are also various forms of angle shooting in practice. Russian top regular Feruell is accused of heavy buttoning and he admits it.

“King of Limit” Feruell, one of the most famous Russian regulars, was banned at PokerStars in July 2013 for buttoning (avoiding posting blinds).

Stars sent Feruell a warning – should he continue breaking the rules, he will imminently receive permanent ban. And so it happened. Elite regular with still secret name (what gives him some sort of being fantastic) can’t play in the biggest poker room on the planet:

“Well, I have my PokerStars account closed. Forever… I had a warning before that for some bullshit, I wrote about this on 2+2 with the text from PokerStars support. Now I have permanent ban.”

Despite all the irreversibility and strictness of punishment, Feruell got his right to play at PokerStars back. Looks like he found “the right words” in conversation with the security department.

And now we have this thread in the end of March 2016 where the mysterious player gets old accusations in the other room.

This year Polish/Belarussian Dzmitry Urbanovich will play at World Series. Russian-speaking superstar came out of nowhere and has all the chances to rewrite poker history once again. Dima already has EPT record and earned almost $5,000,000 in live tournaments last year.

Imagine some “Garbarnia” (football club from Poland) come to the final of ‎UEFA Champions League to win Barcelona FC for example. Or some unknown young Polish boxer winning Floyd Mayweather by KO in the first round.

Have you imagined?

This is what Dzmitry Urbanovich did in the world of poker. And he is just 20 years old.