Last week PokerStars announced the signing of the first ever Finnish player in their Team PokerStars Pro. Perhaps surprisingly, it's Ville Wahlbeck who only a year ago announced he is quitting poker in the wake of his phenomenal WSOP successes.


Ville Wahlbeck had a truly astonishing WSOP in 2009; after many years of disappointment he became the first Finnish player to win a bracelet, and that was just part of it: he made three more final tables and two deep finishes, all but one of them at the very hardest $10,000 events (plus the $50,000 HORSE), and what's even more remarkable, all of them at different poker variations: 7-game Mixed Event, Stud, Omaha-8, NL 2-7 Draw Lowball, Razz, and HORSE. However, even before the WSOP started he had already decided he would be quitting the game after 6 years as a pro.

"I have too much gamble, it's not good for me," Ville said after winning the super tough $10,000 Mixed Event World Championship, explaining his decision to quit. But now he is back, as a member of Team PokerStars Pro.

Ville Wahlbeck talked to Coinflip.com about the deal and what he's been up to in the past 12 months. He did stay away from the game almost completely for 8 months, happily becoming a father late in 2009, but finally he had to admit that he missed poker too much.

"I had plenty of time to think about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, and all other options just seemed too damn hard so I had to start playing again," he says laughing.

However, Ville points out that he will not start playing as much as he used to because he doesn't want to experience another burn-out like before. Furthermore, getting the deal with PokerStars was instrumental in the decision to turn pro again. "(Without the deal) I probably would have just played an event here, another one there," he describes.

The deal with PokerStars includes the EPT, WSOP and some other events. It comes up for renewal in a year but Ville says his goal is to make it long term.

Ville will fly over to Las Vegas by the end of June and play some preliminary events before the Main Event, even though most of his favourite events will have already taken place by then. He says his huge success last year doesn't cause him any extra pressure this time around.

The winner of the $50k Players' Championship, Michael Mizrachi became Ville's successor as the Mixed Event World Champion but this time the final table was all NL Hold'em to please the tv audiences. Ville says he doesn't like the idea but he understands the decision by the WSOP and ESPN: No Limit is more popular than the other poker variations put together so showing games that even many successful NL players - not to mention the average Joe - hardly understand would have been suicidal in terms of tv ratings.

But, as an expert in limit games, Ville naturally hopes that mixed events will increase in popularity in the future. According to him, No Limit is pretty much a "solved game" as 9-handed tournament game. Some years ago it was still common that only two players at a 9-handed tournament table knew what they were doing while the rest were happy to go broke with weak top pair in the first level, but those days are over.

"NLHE tournaments would be more interesting if the antes were introduced earlier or if there were more 6-handed events, though the latter would be more costly for the casinos and not likely to happen," Ville says.

Ville Wahlbeck has a total of 11 WSOP cashes and $1.3 million in live tournament earnings. He will play on PokerStars with the nickname "V. Wahlbeck".