Patrik Antonius

b. December 13, 1980

Patrik Antonius is a young professional player from Helsinki, Finland. Although he has been playing poker since he was eleven, Antonius focused most of his life on becoming a professional tennis player.

After he graduated from Helsinki Business College, Antonius served in the Finnish army, which he regards as “the toughest six months” of his life. Antonius was allowed to continue playing tennis while serving in the army.

Immediately after his duty of service was over, he intended to start playing in professional tennis tournaments. Before his first tournament, however, Antonius suffered from a major but chronic back injury, which ultimately ended his dream of becoming a tennis professional.

He decided that the injury would allow him to pursue his other lifelong dream, to become a professional poker player. During his childhood in Helsinki, Antonius went from earning $.50 a day playing poker at eleven to earning $50 a day by age fourteen.

By 18, Antonius started playing poker at casinos. Every Wednesday night, the Helsinki Casino held a $25 No Limit poker tournament. Antonius won the first poker tournament that he entered at the Helsinki Casino.

Switching between successful runs of poker at home games during the week and losing all his winnings at the Helsinki Casino on weekends, Antonius decided he needed to change things up a bit, so he turned to online Pot-Limit Omaha poker.

Starting out with a $200 bankroll, within two months he had turned it into $20,000. Antonius valued the convenience of being able to play poker at anytime and at more than one table simultaneously. It only took nine more months to turn $20,000 into $80,000, and it became clear that he was forever hooked.

During a trip to the United States to play tennis again, Antonius won an online satellite tournament for a seat in the World Series of Poker. While at the tournament, he met up with several professional players, like Marcel Lüske and Jennifer Harman, who encouraged Antonius to continue focusing on his game because he had real talent.

After this boost of confidence, he flew back home to Finland to pursue a career in full-time online poker.

Antonius is part of Marcel Lüske’s “Circle of Outlaws,” which is a handpicked group of ten young up and coming online pro players who each make hundreds of thousands of dollars each year playing poker online. The other players in the group are the Mizrachi brothers, Scott Flansburg, Luca Pagano, Noah Boeken, Erica Schoenberg, Jules Leyser, Frank Sinopoli and Marco Traniello, who is the husband of professional poker star Jennifer Harman.

Poker professional, Barry Greenstein, published an analysis of Antonius on his website. Greenstein rates Antonius highly for his skills in short-handed games, but makes an overall criticism against him that Antonius should develop more patience during full games.

Antonius can be seen regularly playing on Full Tilt Poker under the nicknames Patrik Antonius, luigi66369 and Tryharderfish.

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