None could top the following hand, however, which took place just after midnight EST.

Sauce123 entered the hand with $107,742 to Amit’s $42,898.

Amit, who plays on PokerStars as refaelamit, opened for $580, Sauce123 three-bet to $1,920 and Amit four-bet to $4,120.

Finally Sulsky decided to end the betting by just calling.

The flop came 7♥ 6♣ 5♠ and then the real fireworks started.

Sauce123 checked but Amit immediately fired for $5,800. Sulsky check-raised to $13,400 and Amit re-raised to $17,400.

At this point Sauce123 decided to just jam, easily covering Amit. Amit eventually made the call and the cards were on their backs.

Amit: 8♦ 6♥ 5♥ 4♠ (eight-high straight)

Sulsky: T♣ 9♦ 8♣ 6♠ (nine-high straight)

It’s always hard to get far ahead in PLO but in this case Sulsky had Amit crushed. According to our pot odds calculator Sulsky had a stranglehold on the hand and was a 79.52% favorite to win with his better straight.

Amit did have some outs as they headed to the turn, however, with full house possibilities and a backdoor flush draw.

The turn was the K♦, which quickly put to rest any weird flush draws, but the river was a thundering 6♦ giving Amit a boat and the pot. He ended up raking in $85,794 thanks to the lucky river card.

It wasn’t all bad for Sauce123, however, as he would eventually finish the session as the ultimate winner with $80,429 in profit.

Sauce123 is off to an exceptional start in 2012 and has already picked up $671k in the first month of online poker.

Be sure to check our online poker stats section for more information but in the meantime you can see exactly how the hand played out in our hand-replayer below:

Joining Kyllonen on the list of six-figure winners are high-stakes regulars like Rafi Amit, Ronny Kaiser and Davin Georgi.

Headlining the week’s losers are Patrik Antonius, Sander Berndsen and Theo Jorgensen.

Keep reading for the full rundown of the biggest winners and losers this week in online poker.

Top 10 Winners: Jan. 21-27, 2011

Despite Viktor Blom showing just a small net loss on the week, he played an integral part in the distribution of money, and was actually the direct cause of most of the biggest winners and losers.

Jens “Jeans89” Kyllonen won roughly $300k on Monday, much of it from Blom, playing shorthanded $100/$200 PLO and finished up $526,000 on the week.

The second biggest winner was patpatman who suffered losses to the tune of $268 last weekend but surged back to just shy of $450,000 in net profit by week’s end. Tuesday was particularly lucrative for the unknown high-stakes player as he raked in roughly $400k in a single 24 hour period.

The list of winners is rounded out by known pros Rafi Amit (+$278k) and Ronny Kaiser (+$266k.

Jens Kyllonen was the week's biggest winner.

 

Here are the top ten winners in the online nosebleed cash games this week:

Top 10 Losers: Jan. 21-27, 2011

Phil Galfond has been extremely active in the high-stakes games so far in 2012 but this week was an absolute disaster.

Galfond got tuned up for over $700,000 since we reported last Friday, prompting him to release this video blog. Galfond says he’s selling his New York condo since he’s been spending the bulk of his time in Vancouver playing online.

He also updated his fans via Twitter that his Stars account was at just $90k, and he wouldn’t be returning to the $100/$200 games until he had rebuilt it to $250k.

Alongside Galfond on the list of losers, though faring much better, is Fake Love888, the account believed to belong to Patrik Antonius. Fake Love was on the winners list last week, earning $186k, but he gave that back and more in the last seven days, finishing down just over $300k.

In the third spot is Dutch pro Sander “Berndsen12” Berndsen with just over $282k in losses. Much of his losses were at the hands of Viktor Blom on Tuesday.

Here are the top 10 losers in the online poker cash games this week:

In a press release, the Melbourne resident detailed some of the reasons for the partnership on his end. “After many years working extensively around the world, I made the decision that my next venture would keep me closer to home, would allow me to spend more time with my family and was something that presented me with a wider range of opportunities,” Hachem said.

“I am delighted to announce that I have decided to partner with a consortium comprising the AsianLogic Group and some of their contemporaries,” he continued. “I will be working with the group in several areas, initially as a new ambassador for the Asian Poker Tour to further the growth of poker and to assist them with several strategic opportunities in Australia and the Asia Pacific region.”

Hachem had been with PokerStars, the world’s largest online poker room, for six years, establishing the relationship after he won the WSOP Main Event.  That partnership came to a mutual end in December.  At the time, Hachem said, “It’s been a great run with PokerStars and I’m proud of my association with the people and the company. But it’s time for me to pursue other career opportunities and it will be fun to have some down time to spend with my family. I look forward to the future with much excitement and anticipation and will always have fond memories of my time at PokerStars.”

The Aussie is obviously best known for his $7.5 million win in the 2005 WSOP, but he has also seen his fair share of success since his big moment. The following year, he nearly captured a second bracelet, finishing as the runner-up to Dutch Boyd in the $2,500 Short-Handed No-Limit Hold’em event, earning himself over a quarter million dollars. During that same 2006 WSOP, he also placed 4th in the $2,500 Pot-Limit Hold’em event and had a fairly deep run in the Main Event, placing 238th. In December of 2006, Hachem won the $15,000 World Poker Tour (WPT) Doyle Brunson North American Poker Classic, a score of over $2.2 million.

He has a long string of cashes since then, including an 11th place finish in the 2008 European Poker Tour (EPT) Grand Final ($159,818), a win in the 8-Game Championships at the 2009 EPT London ($67,499), and a runner-up finish in the Main Event at last year’s The Big Event in Los Angeles ($300,000). All told, Joe Hachem has won over $11.3 million on the live tournament circuit in his career.

To conclude his thoughts about his new relationship with AsianLogic, Hachem said, “I considered offers from several other brands, but this partnership was the best fit for me as it gave me an active role and the ability to participate as the businesses evolve. The Asia Pacific poker market is still in its infancy and has in my opinion, huge potential for growth relatively to the European more mature markets. The United States are also going through an important phase and it will take a little time before things come into place and operators emerge. Working with a partner in the same time zone makes life a lot easier and whilst I am still going to be traveling to the major poker tournaments, being able to spend more time at home is fantastic.”

State Senator Jeff Danielson (D-Cedar Falls) told the Des Moines Register Tuesday that he has plans to introduce a new online poker bill to state legislature soon and expects it to be considered during the current session.  A catalyst for the bill seems to be the DoJ’s December clarification of the Wire Act of 1961 in which it confirmed that the law only makes sports betting over the internet illegal, rather than all gambling.  Even though the Fifth District Court ruled that it only applied to sports betting in 2002, the DoJ had always asserted that the Wire Act applied to gambling of all kinds.  The DoJ’s clarification appears to have changed the attitudes of state legislators around the country, allowing new opinions to be formed about not just intrastate online poker, but interstate online poker, as well.

“We believe that because of the Department of Justice ruling, we can now have a multi-state compact,” Danielson told the Register.  One major concern proponents of online poker have with regards to states legalizing the game within their own borders is that the player pool will be extremely fragmented and only a handful of states, such as California, would have a large enough poker playing population to adequately fill the virtual tables.  If states collaborate on a multi-state player pool like we have seen in the lottery with games such as Powerball and Mega Millions, both the player pool and resulting revenue should be much more significant.

In December, the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission published a study on the prospects of intrastate online poker in Iowa which estimated that it would bring in anywhere from $3 million to $13 million in tax revenue.  State Senator William Dotzler (D – Waterloo), a supporter of the bill, would welcome the cash flow. “I think the evidence is pretty clear that Iowans are already gambling online. We are losing a lot of revenue [to offshore gambling sites] here in the state of Iowa,” he told the Register.

Interestingly, Danielson, who is also chairman of the Iowa Senate State Government Committee, was quoted in a New York Times article from Tuesday saying that he was not overly concerned with the financial impact of legalized online poker.  “We are not doing this to expand our state budget,” he said. “Our purpose is to make sure every Iowan who wants to play poker has a fair game, has protections, and, if they win, is able to retain those earning [sic] in a fair and safe way.”

Danielson introduced an online poker bill early last year and it appeared that it had potential after passing through his Senate State Government Committee by a 9 to 6 vote.  The bill stalled, though, once it reached the State Senate, when the usual concerns were brought up by the opposition.  In the meantime, it was amended to request the aforementioned report from the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission.  “I just think people need a clearer picture of the evidence and I don’t think they’re ready in this session to legalize it. So we want to give them the best information possible as we go into next year,” Danielson said at the time.

Today in the 3-Bet we find an Olympic hopeful banking on online poker, grinders getting pinched for their cash at US customs and Gus Hansen steamrolling Jimmy Fricke.

1) Olympic Fencer Uses Online Poker to Supplement Funding

Threads usually turn up between poker and virtually every competitive enterprise (see our recent Poker and MMA post) so it’s no surprise even fencers draw on poker for help from time to time.

Brit Jamie Kenber, an Oxford graduate and surefire fencing candidate for the 2012 London Olympics, told the BBC he occasionally uses online poker to help with the bills when he's training.

"I've had some wins,” Kenber says, “but it's not a reliable source of income unless you have a lot of time to commit.

"I'm a decent hobbyist, but I've made a little bit of money from it."

Jamie Kenber (right). Photo: Getty Images.

 

As for any similarities between fencing and poker, Kenber says there are a few:

"In fencing someone might show you something and you don't know whether they're actually going to go through with it or if it's just an early bluff.

“That happens in poker as well.

"And if you think people are doing things for the wrong reasons you can end up losing. It's no coincidence that I enjoy both of them."

Check out the full feature here.

2) Never Let Your Sweaty Younger Brother Hold Your Cash

Before getting in to poker, it was one of those things on the customs form that always made us laugh.

Declare your money.

 

Any plants or fruit with you? Um, no. Over $10,000 cash? Ha, yeah sure.

After poker, well, having a lot of cash with you just seems normal – and a very important thing to declare at customs.

Three grinders from New Jersey found that out this weekend when they had $26k seized at the Nassau airport.

Sean Ruane (18) and his older brother Michael (23) both had to plead guilty to falsely declaring the money while going through US pre-customs leaving the Bahamas.

Their 18-year-old cousin Thomas Freeman Jr, pleaded guilty to abetting them.

How'd they get caught?

“It was revealed by prosecution that a secondary search of the defendants brought on by the nervousness of the sweating younger brother, showed that the brothers were each in possession of $9,400.”

None were given an additional sentence but the cash stays in the Bahamas.

An expensive lesson, for sure. Declare your cash. And never let your sweaty brother handle things at customs.

Full story here.

3) Fricke Rolled by Hansen in 2007

With another Aussie Millions main event set to get underway (check our live coverage Saturday for updates), we're revisiting a classic final table from 2007.

Running over both Gus Hansen and Andy Black three-handed to take a massive chip lead into heads up, 19-year-old Jimmy Fricke was set to score his biggest win ever and justify the negative comments he had made about how bad some pros were playing.

Hansen had other ideas, however, got hit by the deck pretty hard and stormed back to take the title.

Despite the $1m AUD he won, the sadder arc of the Jimmy Fricke story was born here as he was taken to task online for his negative interviews and wardrobe selection, among other things.

He later became known for an email exchange with Howard Lederer labelling him a "freak and a really weird dude" and the ubiquituous Fricke Roll.

Here's how the final played out: