Patrik Antonius banked more than two million dollars in the month to lead all players in profit at Full Tilt cash games. He put in a lot of work to do…he played more than 700 sessions and had nearly 25,000 tracked hands. He earned $1.9M of the profit playing HORSE.

The big month also gave Antonius a huge lead in the standings for 2009. He has won nearly $6.7 million for the year, nearly doubling the amount of profit of his nearest competitor. (theASHMAN103 at $3.6M). Phil Ivey and Ilari “ziigmund” Sahamies are the only other players with more than $3M in profit in ‘09.

Speaking of Ivey, he put together a spectacular run heading into his appearance at the final table of the World Series of Poker main event. He banked more than $1.7M. Abe “EazyPeazy” Mosseri was nearly over $1M at $975K.

Gus Hansen finally had a good month after going through a huge downswing for much of the year — he was up $750K for the month. Tom “durrrr” Dwan, known for his huge swings up and down, had a modest (by his standards) month, up $640K, good enough for fifth in the month among all players.

Logging bad months in October were David Benyamine (-$2M) and Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond (-$1.2M). The horrid month put Benyamine more than $1.8M behind for the year, the fourth worst 2009 of all players. Third on the net loss list was “isildur1″ a new player on the high stakes scene whose identity is unknown. He (or she) lost nearly a million for the month.

Source: Highstakesdb.com

In 2009, Galfond set his sights on the increasingly popular poker training market with the launch of Bluefire Poker, a video instruction site with a heavy emphasis on cash games (including deep coverage of both no limit and pot limit omaha cash). Phil was nice enough to take time from his schedule to answer a few questions for us via email.

Read our review of Bluefire Poker here. Visit BlufeFire to learn more about their roster and available videos.

PTP: Let’s start by talking a little about BlueFirePoker. When did you first start thinking that you’d rather be running a training site instead of contributing to one?

PG: I had made a video for another website that were fairly well received. I entered into negotiations with the owners of that site to work out a deal for becoming an instructor but we couldn’t reach a deal that we could both agree on. I knew that I wanted more creative control than they were willing to relinquish and when I was approached by the BlueFire team, it seemed like the perfect fit. As the lead pro, I have quite a bit of control in the pros that are hired and the content released on the site.

PTP: What’s the development process been like? How long did the site take to come together, and how steep was the learning curve for you?

PG: From the time I was first approached by the other founding members of BlueFire to the time that the first videos were released was only about three months. I didn’t find it that hard to make videos as I had already made a few in the past for other sites and was familiar with the software. I think the quality of my videos as well as the other videos on the site has remained consistent since the beginning but we’ve tried to listen to the feedback of the members and make videos with content that they are interested in. The content of the videos is constantly changing and we really try to give the members whatever content they want to see.

PTP: What are your thoughts on the common argument against training sites – that they make the games tougher and ultimately make the games less attractive to recreational players?

PG: Training sites have become a poker arms race. Once players began to join training sites a few years ago, they became more successful in the games that they played in which forced the other players to get better or drop in stakes. Now that there are a number of sites out there, Training sites certainly make the games harder but they are an invaluable tool for players who wish to take their game to the next level. The beauty of poker is that there is always something that one can learn to improve their game.

PTP: Poker seems to be cooling off a bit in the US, post-UIGEA. Is regulation the only thing that can reignite casual interest in the game, or can you imagine some other scenario that could really jack up the interest level again?

PG: Regulation would certainly be a tremendous help in opening the game of poker up to entirely new groups of people. I often hear people say that they don’t like to play online because they are worried about collusion or some form of cheating. Governmental regulation and the establishment of an independent group tasked with maintaining the security and integrity of all the online poker sites would go a long way in quelling people’s fears of playing online.

Galfond plays on PokerStars as mrsweets28 Phil Galfond is a high-stakes cash pro who made his name primarily at Pot Limit Omaha games, but who excels at several poker formats and variants.

Galfond may be familiar to casual poker fans from his appearance on Game Show Network’s High Stakes Poker during Season Four.

Galfond is also the owner of a WSOP bracelet, captured in the $5,000 buy-in Pot-Limit Omaha with Rebuys event at the 2008 World Series of Poker.

In 2009, Galfond launched an online poker training site, BlueFire Poker, focused primarily on cash game instruction.

BlueFire made news in early 2009 by issuing an open challenge to President Barack Obama and all members of the US Congress to play a heads up no limit match for $1 versus Galfond’s $1 million dollars to prove that poker was a game of skill.