EPT Paris: The picture worth $13m (and 40 COOP titles, at least)
On the face of it, it’s just another photo from a poker tournament players’ party. But this one, snapped by PokerStars photographer Jules Pochy at the EPT Paris meet-up this week, is something quite special, at least for fans of online poker.
In the frame here are three Swedish poker pros, who in “real life” go by the names of (l-r) Simon Mattsson, Niklas Astedt and Anton Suarez. But those first two have the PokerStars monikers “C. Darwin2” and “Lena900”, and are arguably the two best online tournament poker players the game has ever seen.
(Though Suarez keeps his online identity hidden, it’s highly likely he’s also one of those super-tough Swedish PokerStars regs who just keeps on winning. We just can’t put a name to him.)
Simon Mattsson, Niklas Astedt and Anton Suarez: Three incredible Swedish players
THE BEST EVER
It’s impossible to overstate just how dominant Mattsson and Astedt are in the online poker space. Between them, they have 40 COOP titles, and literally thousands of wins across all other tournaments. Both have spent months at the top of the online poker rankings. And they’ve both been doing it for more than 15 years.
By most observers’ reckoning, online tournaments have tougher average fields than major live events. So the Swedish pair’s achievements are simply unmatched. But they’re also hardly slouches in the live environment.
Mattsson has documented tournament winnings of close to $1.9 million. Suarez (because we can count his live achievements) has close to $3 million, including a $1m prize from a tournament in Nottingham, plus a final table appearance at EPT Barcelona last year.
Astedt tops them all, with $8 million in earnings recorded on the Hendon Mob*, including an appearance at the World Series of Poker Main Event final table. These figures are all the more stunning because he doesn’t make a habit of playing the Super High Roller circuit, where the biggest prizes get awarded these days. Astedt is a volume player.
FRIENDS AND RIVALS
Of course, it stands to reason that Mattsson, Astedt and Suarez know one another. They inhabit a small world: poker pros from Sweden. But as this photo makes clear, they are also friends. We have heard countless times through the years about the importance of community among poker pros, and their success almost certainly owes a lot to their ability to discuss poker among one another.
And it won’t just be strategy either. The life of the poker pro is like no other. The grind. The variance. The doubts. Really, it’s only another poker pro who can really understand, and one suspects these three — as well as other Stockholm-based pros — have a really tight-knit support group to help them all raise their games.
Suarez told us during his deep run in Barcelona last year how much it means to be able to call on these elite minds to give him support. And it’s inevitable that the good will is reciprocated.
So while this photo may seem nothing special, it’s really worth a thousand words. And many, many millions in online tournament earnings.
*While the Hendon Mob figures mostly document live earnings, several Covid-era online events also contribute to these totals.
THE SWEDES IN NUMBERS
Niklas “Lena900” Astedt
SCOOP wins: 11
WCOOP wins: 12
Hendon Mob total live earnings: $8,051,601
Simon “C. Darwin2” Mattsson
SCOOP wins: 14
WCOOP wins: 3
Hendon Mob total live earnings: $1,885,317
Anton Suarez
Hendon Mob total live earnings: $2,954,647
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