Post #2000: A Ziigmund Story

[Disclaimer: I don't even remember if I told this story originally ITT or not - the following is a direct book excerpt. Anyway I thought people might enjoy this, and since I noticed that this thread has somehow reached 2000 posts I thought what the hell, might as well post it.]



The next issue of Poker Pages magazine is getting closer to the finish line. Our brilliant Art Director shows us a slideshow of the pages that are finished, and the magazine looks magnificent. I see my own stories laid out, and all the beautiful pictures accompanying them. Even the fencing story looks amazing in its final format. People are going to love this issue.

My last task regarding issue two is an interesting one. Tero is in Las Vegas following Peter Eastgate, so it's just me and Sanna working on the last unfinished pages. Sanna wants me to tag along with a photographer who's about to take a special kind of portrait of Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies, one of the most interesting characters in poker. Ilari is notoriously difficult with the media, and according to Sanna, the few comments we need to go along with the picture would be easier to get if the interviewer was another poker player.

“Just go there, don't take your tape recorder. Ilari doesn't like being recorded. And he doesn't like surprises, so don't try to catch him off guard. If you get him to say anything at all, consider it a small victory. Oh, and he's almost certainly not going to be there, even if he promises to come. You need to call him all afternoon to remind him and make him promise to come so many times that he can't bail out.”

I know Ilari, of course. In 2008, there are few online players in the world more legendary than him, if any. Ziigmund, his online moniker, is the most followed player on the internet. The other great online players of the moment – Tom Dwan, LarsLuzak, Phil Ivey – are all mainly famous for the amounts of money they make, not for their personalities. Ilari makes a lot of money, too, but he's more famous for the way he occasionally loses it. Only a few months ago he lost two million dollars online in a single session, later shrugging it off with: “I was hungover and didn't care”. Ilari is also famous for bad-mouthing his opponents in the chat in his broken English, making for hilarious quotes endlessly posted to poker forums around the world by railbirds.

Ziigmund is a legend, but he’s one of those people whose real-life personas don't seem to match their online personas at all. I've met Ilari a couple of times, and he's barely said a word. I have no idea how this is going to pan out, but I accept Sanna's request anyway, and call the photographer.

“Can you meet me a few hours before the shoot? We need to go buy some materials,” he asks.

“Sure, what do we need?”

“Boxing gloves. Do you know where we could buy some cheap, used ones? And lots of gasoline.”

I assume I must have misheard, and ask him to repeat.

“Boxing gloves and gasoline. We’re going to set him on fire.”

“Does Ilari know about this?”

“Of course he doesn't. That guy's already impossible to schedule a photo shoot with, there's no chance he'd come if he knew about this. Don't tell him!”

Once again, I wonder what I've signed up for.

I meet the photographer, Taavetti, at a store I've scouted for us that sells used sports goods. We buy a pair of boxing gloves, and then head to a gas station to buy gasoline, a special lighter and a fire extinguisher so that we can somewhat safely set Ziigmund on fire.

We then head to an empty beach where the photo shoot will take place. It's just after sunset, slightly above freezing, a brisk night in late autumn. Only a few dog-walkers pass us by, giving us long looks when we practice lighting the gloves on fire with me wearing them.

The photographer tells me to shadowbox with the burning gloves on, so that he can get his camera's settings right. The heat is burning my hands, and I wonder if the leather is going to melt and burn through my skin.

Ilari is late, of course, and following Sanna's advice, I call him again as soon as I'm allowed to take off the boxing gloves.

“What photo shoot? Oh, did I promise to do that? I thought it was next week,” Ilari says. I can hear the sounds of online poker in progress in the background.

I tell him almost angrily that we are freezing our asses at an empty beach, and we have prepared with expensive materials, so he really needs to get here.

Ilari seems to be caught a little bit off guard, as if he's not used to people telling him what to do. But he promises to get on his way, and it only strikes me afterwards that he was probably playing for tens of thousands of euros at the very second I was telling him to drag his ass to this frozen beach. I hope he at least won the pot.

After what feels like an endless wait, Ilari finally arrives, a little over an hour late, in his Ferrari. He parks it right at the beach, making the odd passers-by give us even longer looks.

I remember being told stories about jealous people spitting on Ilari's Ferrari. Finland is not a country where it's acceptable to show off.

“What's the gasoline and the fire extinguisher for?” Ilari asks.

“I'm sure the photographer will tell you,” I dodge. “He has something special planned for this photo shoot.”

When Ilari hears about the plan, he says that there's no way he's doing it. He has no interest in being set on fire, which I can well understand. Ilari and the photographer argue a little bit, and I step in and say that let's just do this, since we're already here. I'm sure that Taavetti knows what he's doing.

I have no idea if Taavetti knows what he's doing.

Eventually Ilari budges, but on one condition. He says that he has something he wants to say, and he wants it printed, next to the picture, word for word. He'll only do the photo shoot if we agree to print his manifesto.

I have no idea what this could be, but given that Sanna said it'd be hard to get anything out of Ilari at all, I'm seeing this as a good thing. I shake hands with Ilari to seal the deal.

Ilari tightens up his hoodie, puts on the gloves and the photographer enlists me to throw gasoline all over them. While I'm spreading it across the gloves, Ilari gives me a long, hard look.

This had better go smoothly, or I'm going to burn you.

Taavetti says that he's ready, and ushers me to ignite Ilari.

“Are you ready?” I ask him, and before he has time to answer, I light the gloves on fire, and run backwards out of the picture's range. Watching Ilari shadowbox with his hands burning like torches against the silhouette of a blue night sky is a beautiful sight. It reminds me of the torch jugglers practicing in Barcelona's parks after sunset.

The photos get taken, and Ilari survives without burns. When we're wrapping up, I ask Ilari for his manifesto.

“Write this down on pen and paper, word for word. I won't accept a single word being left out,” Ilari says, looking serious. He then proceeds with his manifesto, which is all about one of Finland's best poker players, who's also our guest writer and one of Ilari's best friends. They seem to have a playful but public beef, where they take jabs at each other on the forums and on the pages of poker magazines. And now Ilari's ready to take it to the next level, and really throw some dirt on his foe, much like he does in the chats of his online tables.

I write everything down, confused, and call Sanna when Ilari has disappeared into the night in his Ferrari.

“So, did Ilari show up?” Sanna asks.

“Yeah, he did. And we set him on fire.”

Sanna chuckles.

“There's just one little hiccup here,” I begin. “I kind of promised Ilari that we'd quote him word for word on something, it was the one condition under which he would do the photo shoot.”

“Yeah, what is it?”

“That ***** ******* (<-- One of Finland's most famous poker players, not going to put the name here on 2p2 though) constantly comes to his door to borrow condoms and Viagra so that he can **** even the dirtiest of whores.”

We both laugh, but it's a nervous laugh. Neither of us knows what to do. We can't piss Ilari off, because we'll need him for our future issues, but we can't really publish the quote. If we do, ***** is going to be mad, and we also need him.

In the end we contact Jasper, who often helps us out when it comes to issues we need to ask permission for. He knows everyone who's financing us, he knows everyone working on the magazine, and he knows Ilari. He says that Ilari is stubborn, and if we don't do as promised, he's going to get pissed off and quit working with us in the future.

“It's your call, but I think you should just print it.”

We end up printing it, word for word.

This is absolutely without a single doubt the most amazing blog I have ever read. Started reading it yesterday at 5am (lolz) and I was instantly hooked on your way of describing all those events. Brilliant. If I recall correctly you have also written a book? Title?

once a gambler

Amazing and inspiring story. It took me 2 days to read the whole thread. I copied everything in word and read it at work.

This entire blog is amazing and that Ziigmund pic & story no different. It also seems rather fitting to have the Chuck Bass name, considering you seemed to be very alike at some points in your blog. Look forward to reading more at some point.

Bought the book, just finished reading this part. God damn it who is James Jameson

man ziigmund is so bald, nice posts tho op

I just purchased the ebook of Part 2, is there a gap between what's been posted on this thread and Part 2?

edit: Nevermind, I see there's a gap of about a year, I do find that to be slightly disappointing.

Amazing blog!

Any small update for the fans?

+1

Hey, sorry I didn't mean to ignore these. I was traveling around and I had missed the thread getting bumped completely.

Not much to report really, I'm a pretty boring 30-year old nowadays. I just got back from Australia where I spent the winter, and now I'm flathunting in Finland. Poker hasn't been going too great (results-wise) and pending some last minute turnaround I'm fairly sure this will be my last year as a poker professional. My lifetime profit is sitting somewhere around +$550k and it seems likely that ballpark is where it'll roughly remain forever. The plan is to seek for a job in TV production, I'm about to finish my first screenplay which I've been working on for quite some time. If that doesn't work out, I'll do something else writing-related. I'm already doing a fair bit of freelancing (both poker and non-poker stuff), and I'm not at all worried about finding a job in that area shall I need one. The really cool thing about the last decade is that I've managed to build myself quite a resume in the only area I've ever really been interested in pursuing (writing). And I achieved it all because of poker, directly or indirectly, which I find quite awesome. I didn't become the next Phil Ivey in the end, but I had lots of great experiences and managed to build myself a future on the side which isn't too bad.

Once I quit poker, the plan is to truly quit, as in uninstalling every piece of software and just pretty much never play poker again. Not because I'd find it to be harmful per se, but I'm competitive and poker just tends to suck the life out of you in many ways when you're trying to succeed at it. Even now whenever I'm supposed to be writing, my mind is a lot cloudier if I've played poker within the last 24 hours or so and it's just not happening. So even though I find poker to be a nice hobby in theory, I don't think it'd be a suitable hobby for me specifically. Plus I don't want to get back to degening around which is likely what would happen with limited playing hours.

I can already see the finish line on the horizon, and honestly, I feel pretty good about it. It's weird to think I differently I used to see things, but it's pretty clear to me now that I really don't want to be a 3x-year old poker professional. I don't think it matters if I quit when I'm 30 or 31 or whatever, but I'd like this whole adventure to end within a couple of years for sure (unless the games somehow magically soften). I can't quite explain what it is -- something about craving some sort of stability and being a little more rooted somewhere, I guess -- but something about being a poker professional even now is bugging me off. I still love the game and enjoy playing it, it's more of a conceptual thing. Guess I'm growing up.

Gonna go out with a bang though, so assuming this plan holds I'm going to take some epic last minute shot at something. What exactly it will be remains to be seen, I'm trying to be pretty financially responsible nowadays but I can't really quit without some sort of last minute yolo adventure

Thanks for the update

Looking forward to the yolo part.

Verstuurd vanaf mijn SM-G920F met Tapatalk

Being 36 I hope that graph is headed for an upswing. Thanks for the update. Always loved and followed your writing here.

Holy balls, this thread is still running? *rereading*

About eight months ago two cops showed up at my door. I was working from home – I had started at a new job only a handful days earlier – and was in the process of interviewing someone via Facebook. This was a person who's both very well known and successful (and thus, I assume, also very busy), and I felt honored that he had promised me a few moments of his time.

When the doorbell first rang, I barely paid it any attention. There was no way I was going to pause the interview for the mailman or some guy selling carpets. But the person behind my door kept ringing the doorbell again and again, each time more and more impatiently, as if someone was about to die. It was only after the fourth or fifth ring when I realized that I live in an apartment block that you can't access without both having a key and knowing the security code. This wasn't just a random salesman. A bad feeling crept in; something was wrong. It was a familiar feeling.

I opened the door, and there they were. A male and a female officer, both around 35 years old. I couldn't tell which one of them was the senior officer. As far as I knew, I hadn't broken any laws lately, so this had to be bad news. They had that look on their faces. (How I could tell it was the look -- I don't know. I had never had to deal with cops showing up at my door before, but as soon as I saw the 35-year old officers dressed in dark blue uniforms, I knew that the look on their faces must be the look.)

”I'm afraid we have bad news,” the male officer said.

I nodded, perhaps a little too nonchalantly. I had already concluded that they must have bad news before the officer opened his mouth, so I had already partially processed in my brain what they were about to say. I could hear the sounds of the Facebook chat window in the background; the person I was interviewing must have said something, and was now likely expecting me to say something back. This was made even more likely by the fact that it was me who was interviewing him, and not the other way around.

”I'm really sorry to have to tell you this, but your father was found dead last night,” the female officer said softly.

Sound of another Facebook message behind my back.

”Around 2 A.M. or so,” the male officer added.

I didn't know what to say. This didn't exactly come as a surprise – if anything, my father still being alive after decades of trying to drink himself to death had been a small surprise every day.

For some reason, the only response I could muster up was ”thank you”.

The officers looked at me, understandably surprised by my strange choice of words.

”I mean, thank you for making the effort to tell the news in person. I really appreciate it.”

I invited the officers to come in. They accepted the offer, and gave me the rough specifics of what had happened. They said that they had been unable to rule out the possibility that my father might have fallen victim to a crime, but that they thought it was unlikely. They were going to perform an autopsy, and were expecting to learn about what had happened based on its results. Between these little tidbits about cutting my father's dead body open the officers asked me if I was alright more than once, and I said yes every time. They also asked whether I needed to talk to somebody, and I said that I was fine.

I only had one question to the officers: Had they informed my mother yet? They said that they hadn't, and weren't going to. Informing my father's ex-wife about his death would be up to me, as I was my father's closest living relative.

As the cops were about to leave, the female officer suddenly stopped mid-sentence.

”Wait,” she said, and looked at the male officer. I think the report said he actually died at 4 A.M.”

”I'm pretty sure it was 2 A.M.,” the male officer responded dismissively.

”No, but... think about it. Their shift only started at 3 A.M., right? How could've they been at the scene at 2 A.M. Already?”

The setting where my father took his last breath wasn't just a room, apparently. It was a ”scene”.

The officers argued about this in front of me for a little while. I found it really funny for some reason. Was it supposed to matter to me whether he died at 2 A.M. or 4 A.M.? I would've been asleep either way. Perhaps it would've mattered a week earlier, when I still was technically a poker professional, and was playing my last ever session of Sunday MTTs. A week earlier the difference between 2 A.M. And 4 A.M. would have been the difference between being glued to my screen clicking buttons in my underwear, and lying in my bed sleepless – just like after every Sunday grind for the last decade. Either way, I would have been awake, and there's a chance I might perhaps have sensed something at that exact moment. I'd sensed things like that before, or at least that's what I choose to believe. But since it happened a week later, it didn't make any difference whatsoever whether he died at 2 A.M. or 4 A.M. Either way, I was fast asleep, and I'm pretty sure that I didn't see any dreams about my father.

”Could you call us tomorrow?” the male officer asked. The report is actually on my desk at the office, and I'd be happy to give you more details tomorrow morning.

The word sounded funny. Details. Was I supposed to want to know the details of my father's death, given that I'd known barely any details about his life for the past 25 years? There are many things I would like to know about his life, but I suspected that the officers wouldn't have answers to any of those questions. And neither would anyone else.

I promised to call the officers the next morning. I closed my door behind the officers, and went back to finishing the interview. My mother would still be at work, anyway, and there was no way to contact her for another couple of hours. Might as well do my job, I concluded. The interview ended up going on for almost two more hours.

***

The next day I called the number the officers had given me. The female officer was the one who picked up the phone, and she was very apologetic about the whole time of death episode. My father's time of death had been 4 A.M., she confirmed, and she said that she was extremely puzzled about why they had originally misreported it as being 2 A.M.

I said that it didn't matter.

We then discussed things such as organizing the upcoming funeral and my father's financial situation. The officer asked me if my father had had any assets, and I said that I didn't know for certain, but that I'd be shocked if he wasn't as broke as one can possibly be when he died. The officer then gave me the contact information of a church that my father apparently was a part of. This took me by a small surprise – my father belonged to a church? – but it wasn't until the officer's last question when I really found myself taken aback.

”Have you spoken to your sister yet?”

”I don't have a sister.”

”Our records show that you do, she lives in Tampere.” (A city 200km north from where I live)

”I really, really don't think I have a sister.”

”Hold on, I have two different reports here... I might have mixed something up. Can I call you back later?”


***



Come to think of it, I guess the timing of my father's death (regardless of if it was 2 A.M. or 4 A.M.) was kind of fitting, as I'd spent a lot of time thinking about death lately. I'd listened to Sun Kil Moon's Benji – an album where someone dies in nearly every song – for weeks on repeat. The past few weeks had marked the last breaths of my terminally ill 10-year poker career, the last couple of years of which had been pure suffering. I'd been stagnant, unhappy, and unable to fix many things about my life that needed fixing. While none of my problems were directly caused by poker, in hindsight many of them could've been avoided had I been able to rip off the bandage sooner and just quit the game that was no longer making me happy. But I couldn't, and ended up wasting hundreds and hundreds of days of my life like a dog chasing cars, running after things that I was never going to reach.

The closer I got to the finish line, the more memories from the years gone by playing cards for a living started making their way into my consciousness. Memories of my greatest triumphs, my deepest lows, all the people I met, the girlfriends I'd loved and sometimes hurt, the moments of unbounded happiness I got to experience. Entire autumns spent under the blankets listening to jj, traveling around the world, playing poker in front of TV cameras. The shame I felt after having ****ed up so bad in front of the entire poker community that I barely had the courage to leave my apartment. Busting Esfandiari in a 8,500-euro tournament on EuroSport, the same Esfandiari who'd asked me to rate his girlfriend years before at the Bahamas. Waking up in jail after getting drugged unconscious by a hater. Isai Scheiberg delivering a 30-minute monologue in front of my eyes about how he founded PokerStars. Helping Jeans89 negotiate his first sponsorship deal. The countless interviews and strategy articles I wrote, the strategy videos I produced, the books that I wrote. Breaking down in a toilet booth of a casino shortly after winning the biggest poker tournament of my career. Appearing having gained 30 pounds in my first and last CardPlayer cover after showing up for the photoshoot hungover. I relived every important moment of my career – which happens to coincide with more or less my entire adult life to date – on each night before falling asleep, and made peace with myself and my career. It was a good run. It was time to let go.

For the last few days of my career – I was officially quitting on the last day of Febrauary, 2018 – I felt great, even enthusiastic. The pain and embarrassment of not being able to compete at a high level anymore was entirely gone and replaced by childlike joy of jumping into the unknown. I didn't yet know what I was going to do next, but all of a sudden I found myself ecstatic about all the opportunities waiting around the corner. I came to realize that even though it didn't end the way I'd envisioned, I had every reason to be proud of what I'd achieved. And more importantly, I was pretty sure that whatever I ended up choosing as my next career, it couldn't be harder than playing poker for a living.

When I closed my eyes for the final sprint, trying to meditate before my last Sunday session ever, I saw the faces of friends and colleagues that had passed away over the years. Some of them I had never even met in real life, but I still remember exactly where I was when I heard about the passing of each and every one of them. Waking up in Cannes to the news about ”Dana Gordon” having passed away, and helplessly reaching out to people who knew him at the Hotel Martinez lobby trying to make sense of it all. Reading the sad thread about ”HotKarlMC” at home. I was halfway through eating a bowl of pasta when I started reading that post. I never found the energy to either finish the bowl or wash the dishes. I just threw the entire bowl away with half a portion of penne arrabiata in it. I remember what I was doing when I first heard that Johannes had gone missing in Ljubljana. I didn't even know Johannes – I had only played with him once or twice, but he seemed like a good soul – but I had that bad feeling from the very first second. I tried to do what little I could to help out in the search operation, hoping for a happy ending to that story. The happy ending never came.

I remember an overcast morning at the Isle Of Man after four days of intense player meetings at the PokerStars headquarters. Lou Reed had died on the day I got there, and something felt off the whole time I spent on the island. I'd received countless direct threats from the high stakes players whose cheating ways I was about to expose to PokerStars, and something about the whole island made me feel uneasy. I barricaded my door with the heavy wooden desk in my room every night before going to sleep, but it just made me more restless. With the only exit blocked, I had nowhere to escape.

I was already at the airport on my way home, having survived the island, arguing with a clerk about whether I had a booking for the only flight out of the island that morning or not. She was right, I didn't – PokerStars had accidentally messed up my booking. As soon as I heard my phone ringing and saw that it was my mom – we almost never talk on the phone, and she certainly wouldn't just randomly call me at 10 in the morning knowing that I'm about to board a flight – I knew that something must be terribly wrong. My grandfather had passed away unexpectedly, my mother told me. I was unable to come up with a response that would've sounded shocked even to someone a few thousand kilometres away, because before I knew, I already knew. I'd had that same feeling when I was about to answer another call from my mom four and a half years earlier. That time I was supposed to fly to Las Vegas to play in some WSOP events, catching the tail end of the series. I was still in Helsinki, about to start packing, and before I even picked up the phone, I already knew. Grandma had passed away.

(It should be mentioned that PokerStars went to great lengths to rectify the booking situation and to get me out of the Isle Of Man as fast as they could, and booked me on the next possible flight home.)

***

Poker is a strange profession. We spend nearly our entire careers by ourselves. Alone in our homes, trying to win at a game where most everyone loses. The co-workers that we have are also our competitors, and as much as we might like some of them, we are also trying to take their money, and vice versa. Yet none of us could do it alone. It's a big, cruel world at the tables, and the more you isolate yourself from things outside poker, the lonelier it gets. But doing exactly that – building invisible walls between ourselves and our loved ones to focus all of our mental energy on the game – is what's needed to reach the top. I've had long stretches of time where I've led a somewhat healthy, balanced life – long-term girlfriend, lots of friends, lots of hobbies, only playing poker 40 hours a week or so. I'm not sure if I ever won anything meaningful during those stretches. It was only when I dedicated myself to the game and sacrificed my social life to the poker gods when I got results. The best month of my online career – $100,000 in profit, two Sunday major titles, second place in a TCOOP and a triple crown – I didn't meet a soul for weeks. I played every single day for a month straight, including the Christmas holidays. I got my Triple Crown wins on the 24th, 25th, and the 26th. That's dedication. But that's also killing yourself, or at least hurting your spirit. And the older you get, the more and more this kind of dedication takes its toll on you.

At 31 years old, I no longer have gas left in the tank as a poker player. It's been running low for a long time, possibly for years. My career didn't suffer a sudden 4 A.M. (nor a 2 A.M.) death. It happened slowly over a longer period of time, like cancer slowly eating you up from the inside. I had more than enough time to prepare. And now that it's all over, all I feel is peace.

It was a good run.

It really was.


***


It's been 7 years, and it turns out that I still haven't delivered a resolution to this story. My apologies, it turns out that it's still a work in progress.

PS. Since this volume ended up a little bit morbid, I thought I'd end it on a lighter note: Checking out the list of the current biggest winners from HSDB is an endless source of comedy for me. EEE27, one of the biggest PLO crushers in the world – that's “E” from this thread aka the guy who I got mugged with in Algarve, who I lived with in Thailand, and all around one of my oldest poker friends. Oh and, have you guys heard of this guy called LLinusLLove? A few years ago when I was living in Malta I ran into this pale blonde NL50 noob who looked approximately 17 years old. He was a cool kid though, so we hung out quite a lot. The only thing about him that annoyed me was how he kept going on and on about some dumb new poker software that he thought would change the world. I thought he was being stupid, or at least naive. “Its teaches you to play game theory optimal poker, it's going to change everything, you should study it too!” I ignored him and laughed at the thought of someone finally being able to crack NL50 because of some GTO software. That program was Piosolver and Linus was probably one of the first people to use it. As always, it turns out that the joke's on me

Thanks

Appreciate the closure!! Good luck on your ventures outside of poker in the future.

CB, did you ever end up writing about "the scandal"?

I just bought and read parts 1 and 2 of the book. Did part 3 ever come out? Can buy it on Once a gambler site. Just curious

I still want to read part 3 one day. Hope life is treating you well Mr Bass!