Nosebleed Nostalgia: XWINK Terrorises Full Tilt's High Stakes PLO Tables

In March 2011, XWINK gave us some of the most entertaining action ever seen at the PLO tables, with most railbirds rooting hard for the underdog vs the pros

Back in March 2011 a virtual stranger to Full Tilt's high stakes tables created a whilrwind of action at the PLO tables, making a mess of the bankrolls of some of nosebleed poker's biggest stars on his way to a multi-million dollar win. Of course, the thing about whirlwinds is that they tend to blow themselves out, and just as soon as he arrived, mystery player "XWINK" was gone - although he did manage to bank a few hundred thousand dollars for his efforts!

To say XWINK was a complete stranger to Full Tilt's high stakes tables isn't totally accurate - he had made a brief appearance back in mid 2010 where he won just over $200k between May-June playing NLHE. At the time his presence sparked a decent amount of interest due to the fact that his username "XWINK" was startlingly similar to a young Canadian player known as "Xblink" who had turned a $20 deposit into over $1m at Ultimate Bet the previous year, rising up through the limits at an astonishing rate before cashing out and disappearing from the high stakes tables. You can read about his initial epic brag on 2+2 here

At this stage, however, we just had a Canadian account with a similar name. Speculation heated up considerably at the beginning of March 2011 however, as XWINK came out of nowhere to peak at +$2m after winning huge sums from some of the biggest names in online poker as he took on allcomers heads-up at all stakes of PLO up to and including $500/$1000.

His ascent had actually started at the low-mid stakes a couple of days previously, but his first 2011 appearance on HSDB came on Tuesday 2nd March, where he was the day's 7th biggest winner, taking over $102k from 1.5k hands of PLO. It was between 3rd and 4th, however, where XBLINK's activity really came to light as he took on the likes of Tom "durrrr" Dwan, Andreas "skjervoy" Torbergsen, Rui Cao, Gus Hansen, and David Benefield one after the other at the highest stakes online, making a killing in the process.

His biggest wins on 3rd March came against two Full Tilt "red pros", Rui Cao and David Benefield, with Cao donating $610k, and Benefield $560k. In total, the Canadian player won a little over $1.2m on 3rd March.

It was more of the same the following day, as XWINK won another $447k. At one point during the day his 4 day total eclipsed $2m, an amount which marked the peak of the hyper-aggressive player's climb.

The following day, things started to go wrong for the Canadian wonder with a $515k loss to Cole South his first notable loss since his wild ride began. He also lost in big games against Phil Ivey and Daniel "jungleman12" Cates, to end the day down $1.1m.

Around this time it was finally confirmed by the man himself that he was actually the same 20 year old Canadian who had stormed to huge success as "Xblink" at Ultimate bet, as once again he took to his 2+2 account to confirm his story with the amusing "cliff's notes" below;

A) $4K to $2M in four days. Did this with my excellent bankroll management skills.
 B) Lose $1.2M in one day.
C) Sit around with remainder, probably cash out half a million dollars or something.
D) Will continue to play to entertain you guys."

It wasn't over just yet for XWINK, however, as over the next few days he managed to win back close to $900k with wins over NoPasaran, Ivey, and durrrr.

Over the next week or so, XWINK gradually gave back most of his profits to the highstakes community, but it looks like he did indeed withdraw around half a million dollars as he had stated in his 2+2 post as he continued to play but at considerably lower stakes, and his Full Tilt account (unplayed at highstakes since mid 2011) is still up $457k at $25/$50 and above.

As was befitting of his enthralling run in March 2011, XWINK took down one of the biggest pots of the year on March 10th:

XWINK flops middle set whilst Skjervoy flops a wrap draw and all the money goes in. Skjervoy makes his straight on the turn of the first run but XWINK hits quads to take the first pot. On the second run XWINK fills up on the turn and ends up scooping the entire $421.4k pot

Catch up with more Nosebleed Nostalgia in our next installment next Thursday.

Check out our previous Nosebleed Nostalgia articles below:

Nosebleed Nostalgia 1

Nosebleed Nostalgia 2

Nosebleed Nostalgia 3

Nosebleed Nostalgia 4

Nosebleed Nostalgia 5