Born in 1983 in Helsinki (capital of Finland), Sahamies grew up with an enthusiasm for sport and excelled in several activities such as wrestling, soccer and diving. As a teenager his interest shifted to the game of billiards where he also excelled, so much in fact that he won the Finnish Junior Championships twice. At 15 years old his interest changed yet again after he watched a short programme on television about Texas Hold’em.
The programme left him fascinated and eager to learn more about the game so he chatted about it with his friends at the billiard halls and found himself invited to a home game which turned out to be fellow high-stakes player Patrik Antonius’ home. His first taste of poker left him hooked and he began skipping school classes in order to participate in poker games, but he still managed to graduate. However, instead of going on to college at the age of 18 he began visiting his local casino to play poker for a living.
By 2002 he was a regular in the Grand Casino Helsinki and was having great success playing in the Pot-Limit Omaha cash-games. It was around this time that he discovered online poker, and fascinated by the thought of playing poker from the comfort of his home, he opened several accounts on European poker sites and deposited. He began playing in the $50 NLHE and PLO cash-games and found good success, however due to poor bankroll management he found himself back at square one, depositing to try and build his bankroll yet again.
Sahamies would play long sessions, frequently as much as 15 hours, multi-tabling and playing very aggressively and it was beginning to pay off for him as he continued to go up in stakes and win more money. Around this time many of his poker playing friends began travelling to participate in live poker tournaments, however Sahamies stuck to grinding it out in the online cash-games.
By 2006 Sahamies was well-known on all of the major European poker sites and PokerStars, so much in fact that the games began to dry up and he found it tough to get anyone to play against him. He then created an account on Full Tilt Poker using the alias ‘Ziigmund’ and began taking on the best players in the world at the highest-stakes, which at this time were $100/$200 (now you can find stakes as high as $2,000/$4,000 on Full Tilt Poker). Things started out bad for Sahamies on Full Tilt Poker as he went on to lose $1.2 million in 2007, however in 2008 he finished the year with $1.6 million in winnings.
2009 was certainly the biggest year in Sahamies life as he took to the spotlight both online and offline. He featured in the popular poker television shows ‘High Stakes Poker’ and the ‘NBC National Heads-Up Championships’. He also took part in the Full Tilt Poker Million Dollar Challenge in London where he lost to Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan, launched coinflip.com which is a poker community site where he blogs, joined PowerPoker.com (they offer new players a 110% up to $600 poker bonus); and he had the best year of his poker career online as he finished the year with a profit of just over $3 million. Online he battled against mysterious Swedish player ‘Isildur1’ who many believe is Viktor Blom, and Sahamies managed to win a pot worth $708,988 which is to date the largest pot he has won online.
Offline he has lost much larger pots however. He was in Las Vegas for the 2009 World Series of Poker but instead of participating in tournaments trying to win a bracelet like most players, Sahamies played at Bobby’s Room where he played against the best players in the world in high-stakes cash games. During his time in Bobby’s Room, Sahamies has stated that he won a pot worth $1.7 million, and then lost a pot worth a staggering $2.4 million to close friend Patrik Antonius.
2010 has also been a rollercoaster year at the online poker tables for Sahamies. At one point he found himself up $2.3million, however at the time of writing this article he finds himself down almost $500k.
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Written by Bill Nye on October 27th, 2010