Ilari Sahamies Poker Strategy

There was a time when Ilari 'Ziigmund' Sahamies was widely considered to be in the top ten of the absolute best cash game players in the world, along with the likes of Tom Dwan, Phil Ivey, and Patrik Antonius.

Nowadays his career slowed down considerably. He turned from a poker madman to a responsible family man and while he's still playing poker, he failed to rebuild his presence in the post-Black Friday world, where online nosebleeds are no longer a thing. Even though the last few years of his online cash game career weren't exactly as fruitful as the previous ones, he still won well over a million dollars lifetime on PokerStars and at least a few hundred thousand on Full Tilt.

When we add to that his live tournament winnings of more than $1,500,000 we get a pretty decisive picture of overall poker success, which is impressive when we consider the crazy play style of Ziigmund that all loved to follow.

Meet Ilari

This hand perfectly encapsulates Ziigmund's playstyle. He's an extremely aggressive preflop player, and he absolutely loves to utilize blockers to build a wider than average bluffing range. In this particular hand, he decided to defend his big blind by going over the top with K6o which is especially impressive given that he was facing a recreational player.

The opponent's player type heavily influenced Ilari's flop play. Instead of following up with the aggression on an unfavorable board he decided to take a somewhat unusual line.The thing is that Q8J board should, in theory, smash the 3bet calling range of the recreational player, and giving up here would've made a lot of sense in Sahamies position. However, this is not how Ziigmund usually roles. He realized that the king in his hand blocked a bunch of combos in villain's range and that allowed Ziigmund to put a tremendous amount of pressure on his opponent in a setting he most likely wasn't accustomed to.

Relentless Aggression

Continuing with the theme of relentless aggression we get this little gem of a hand from the final table of EPT Barcelona. It's also a cautionary tale about playing with fire. It's usually not the best idea to try to beat your opponent at a game he's more comfortable with, and Ilari's opponent in this hand clearly failed to grasp that concept. Both players had a similar plan for the hand and tried to put as much preflop pressure as possible on the opponent with marginal holdings.

However, Sahamies had a few important things going for him. First of all, he had a queen blocker which very slightly reduced the frequency of premium hands in the opponent's range (and in the game of small edges, tiny changes in probability are often crucially important). Second of all Ilari correctly realized that the effective stack depth was on his side and he was able to make the final play in the hand.

Knowing When to Slow Down

With all the aggression displayed by Sahamies in previous hands, it's important to point out that he was also able to slow down when necessary. This hand started in a somewhat similar way to the first hand mentioned in this article.

However, Tom Dwan is not your average recreational player and even though his range should be relatively wide, Ilari gave him more respect on a board that should favor the calling range. He correctly recognized that it was going to be very hard for him to extract more than one good street of value from someone like 'Durrrr' and he wisely delayed that bet for as long as possible. Unfortunately for Ziigmund, Tom played his hand in a very deceptive way which lead to him winning the hand.

Utilizing His Image

Another example of the way Ziigmund utilized his image to occasionally slow down the game and extract some value that way, which was especially effective against tough opposition, perfectly aware of his degen ways. Sahamies played this hand like he tried to steal the pot with marginal equity.

Many other players would simply elect to bet the flop, but he decided to strengthen his range in this spot by checking, which worked out perfectly given how it didn't make a lot of sense for him to start bettingon a card pairing the board. This, in turn, prompted an aggressive play from Dwan who thought that flop check combined with the texture made 9x combos in Ziigmund's range extremely unlikely.

More Top Rated Content

Articles

• Creating An Off-Table Plan For Poker
  
• Procrastination and Poker
• How to Get in the Zone and Play Your Best Poker
  

Coaching Videos

• Hypnotherapy in Poker
• Optimizing Sleep for Poker Success
• Finding Balance in Poker and Life