Sami Kelopuro Biography

Sami Kelopuro is a Finnish born player that has risen to success over the last few years in the biggest high stakes games online. Known to the rest of the online poker world as LarsLuzak, Kelopuro has put together several impressive wins on various sites, but also has a tendency to post some mammoth losing sessions as well.

Sami Kelopuro started his online career on the poker site PokerRoom. He eventually moved on to the more lucrative tables over at PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. His style of play reminds many players of Patrik Antonius and his play is described as both aggressive and random.

Kelopuro exploded onto the online poker scene in 2007, taking on all challengers and posting huge wins. His accomplishments that year included the Pokerstars $10,000 NL Holdem High-Roller event where he took $70,000 for his victory. At one point, Kelupuro was up over $1.5 Million. Then his game took a turn for the worse and by the end of 2007, Kelopuro had blown through his Full Tilt Poker bankroll. At the time, the action at the high limit tables was lacking and he also had difficulty in finding sufficient heads-up competition. As a result, Kelopuro decided not to fund his Full Tilt account and walk away from the site for a while.

Many had rumored that Kelopuro had walked away from poker altogether for a while, but in reality, he was still playing online at Betfair under the name of EskiMoes7. Finally, near the end of 2008, Kelopuro reemerged on FullTilt as LarsLuzak.

According to his blog, there were a couple of reasons that Kelopuro decided return to Full Tilt. First, the European games were beginning to dry up. He also said that he “feared also that the skills may rust if you do not play with the best at all.” He liked the fact that there was some decent heads-up competition on the site and mentioned Phil Ivey by name. The other reason stated as the reason that he came back to Full Tilt Poker was that he missed the brand name.

Since his return, Kelopuro has reestablished himself as one of the top high stakes players on the website. He has not been shy in taking on all challengers at the tables. His trend for massive swings has continued as well. For example, through February 11th of 2009, LarsLuzak was down a whopping $2 Million on Full Tilt. However, over the next three days, he was able to erase the entire loss to pull back to around break even for the year.

Kelopuro can be seen regularly playing at the $400/$800 and $500/$1000 HA or HU PLO tables at Full Tilt. He also regularly runs a blog over at pokerisivut.com, but the site is in Finnish. Unless you speak fluent Finnish, you may have some difficulty in reading the blog.

Full Tilt has attracted the biggest and brightest online players on the planet. It is not surprise that Kelopuro has chosen to join the ranks there. With his tendency for massive swings at the table, it will remain to be seen whether he will be able to last long term at the high limits. Regardless of the ultimate outcome, railbirds should expect a wild ride whenever Kelopuro sits at the tables.