The year is still young but the online poker nosebleed limits are already buzzing.

The first “man of the year” so far? Mysterious Russian poker genius “Trueteller.”

On the losing side over the last week of 2014/first days of 2015: Alexandre Luneau and “Eire Abu.”

Luneau Punished by Gus Hansen in FL08

If you’ve watched the recent documentary Nosebleed you know that Gus Hansen is Alexandre Luneau’s favorite opponent at the high-stakes tables.

However, he should probably not face him in a game Hansen is one of the experts in – like Kyle cottonseed1 Hendon, Kyle PKR16 Ray and SallyWoo.

That game is Omaha Fixed Limit Hi-Lo, also known as FL08.

Maybe the Frenchman hoped to improve his disastrous results in 2014 but he played one long session against “The Great Dane” and made things a lot worse.

The two opponents played 730 hands over six and a half hours and afterwards Luneau was missing half a million dollars in his bankroll.

What happened then is what always happens when Gus Hansen gets hold of some money: He plays – a lot.

Gus Gives It Back, Good Start for Trueteller

The action quickly intensified on PLO, 2-7 Triple Draw and the FL08 tables and when the dust cleared again SanIker, Trueteller and carloo13 had made a couple of hundred thousand dollars.

Meanwhile, Gus Hansen was back empty-handed again. And the mysterious Trueteller lived up to his reputation.

In the summer of 2014 the Russian went on an amazing run that brought him $2m and temporarily made him the leader of the yearly leaderboard.

But then he met up with “end boss” Dan Cates, and their meeting had grim consequences for him as he faced some severe downswings after that.

Yet, in the Russian poker community, several professional players confirmed independently that Trueteller was a poker genius and would probably be one of the next dominating players in high-stakes online poker.

The first days of 2015 gave us a little taste of what is supposed to come. SanIker also found a good start into the year — or should we say his hot run carries on.

Biggest Online Poker Pot of the Week

January 2 saw the biggest pot to date this year and the circumstances were highly unusual. The game was Pot Limit Omaha, the limits $100/$200 – a little lower than usual – and it was at a full 6-max table.

The players were St1ckman and EireAbu in the blinds, ImagineKing, fjutekk, DonkPredator and AckmaJin. The action blew up pre-flop already. ImagineKing had min-raised UTG to $400, fjutekk folded, but DonkPredator 3-bet big to $1,740.

That was too much for AckmaJin but the players in the blinds went for it. St1ckman 4-bet to $6k and EireAbu moved his complete stack of $12k across the line.

ImageKing thought better of it but DonkPredator reshoved with $25k. St1ckman called, holding the biggest stack at the table.

Thus $63k was already in the middle before the community cards fell. The board ran

And these were the hands at showdown:

EireAbu:        

DonkPredator:        

St1ckman:        

EireAbu plays against two pairs of aces and eventually wins the main pot hitting two pair.

Biggest Winners of the Week

• Trueteller: $+346,532
• carlooo13, $+337,323
• SanIker:$+312,770
• Cort thecortster Kibler-Melby: $+217,642
• Phil Polarizing Ivey: $+158,588

Biggest Losers of the Week

• Alexandre alexonmoon Luneau: $-528,465
• bbvisbadforme: $-465,276
• Ola Odd_Oddsen Amundsgaard (PS): $-237,536
• Viktor Isildur1 Blom: $-221,506
• Ola No_Ola Amundsgaard (FT): $-177,138

Biggest Winners in 2015

• Trueteller: $+162,408
• Scott gunning4you Seiver: $+148,823
• AckmaJin: $+147,701
• RaulGonzales: $+106,409
• Cort thecortster Kibler-Melby (PS): $+75,765

Biggest Losers in 2015

• EireAbu: $-163,188
• flong78: $-153,891
• Alexander joiso Kostritsyn (PS): $-105,575
• Phil RaiseOnce Ivey (PS): $-94,066
• Chun SamRostan Lei Zhou (PS): $-75,797