Who is RaiseOnce on PokerStars?

RELATED ARTICLES

• Report: Phil Ivey Confirmed as ‘Ra…
• Who Is OMGClayAiken / mrsweets28?

Nothing gets the online poker community going like a screen name mystery they can’t solve. The latest: raiseonce, a high-stakes, unknown player on PokerStars.

So who is the mystery man behind the raiseonce screen name on PokerStars? There’s been a lot of speculation given the nosebleed stakes the account plays, and the hyper-aggressive style raiseonce employs.

Questions about the identity of raiseonce have been floating around since 2009, when he first hit the high stakes games at PokerStars. Raiseonce has dabbled in NLHE (both full ring and shorthanded), Triple Draw and PLO, but tends to play only a table or two at a time, keeping sessions fairly short and hand totals fairly low. Those tendencies, along with the hyper-aggressive style and nosebleed limits played, have led to a few names that top the list as the person behind the Raiseonce screen name.

Raiseonce’s location is listed as Las Vegas.

Is Phil Ivey Raiseonce?

The aggressive style and deep bankroll have led many to speculate that Phil Ivey is behind the raiseonce screen name. As a Full Tilt pro, it would obviously be in Ivey’s best interests to keep his identity private when playing on a rival site.

A few people who have played raiseonce have publicly guessed that Ivey might be the owner of the screen name, given his hyper-aggressive style, penchant for short sessions and low total number of tables.

Ivey also has a pretty strict stop-loss limit – he tends to end a session after losing two buy ins – but there’s not enough history of raiseonce’s sessions available to make a detailed comparison on that point.

The style, the bankroll and the Las Vegas address all seem to provide some grounds for speculating that Phil Ivey might just be raiseonce.

Is Patrik Antonius Raiseonce?

Similar logic here – Patrik has deep pockets, plays an aggressive game and, as a member of Team Full Tilt, would have a motivation to keep his identity under wraps.

However, several people have noted that raiseonce sessions on PokerStars have overlapped with durrrr challenge sessions on Full Tilt Poker, and Antonius doesn’t have a history of playing six+ tables of PLO (for the DC) and NLHE (as raiseonce) simultaneously.

While PA could still be the player behind the raiseonce screen name, it’s tougher to make the case for him than it is for Ivey.

Is Tom Dwan Raiseonce?

This name has been floated as a guess by a few people, but given that raiseonce’s playing history goes back well into 2009, it seems unlikely that Dwan would have risked his position in the poker industry by blatantly multi-accounting (his known Stars alias is Hold_emNL) for the better part of two years and continuing to play even after the raiseonce name starting attracting a lot of attention.

While he has the bankroll and is certainly an aggressive player, Tom Dwan seems less likely than either Ivey or Antonius to be behind the raiseonce screen name.

Who Else Could be Raiseonce?

There are some other names floating around, including Benyamine (not nearly aggressive enough), Todd Bruson (possible) and Erik123 (been a bit since that name was floated), but the majority of the speculation at this point seems to be focusing on Ivey.

While there are a number of reason why it’s probably not Ivey (and tons of reasons why people would be motivated to assume it is Ivey regardless of evidence), that seems to be the best guess of the community atr this point.

We’ll update as developments occur.

Have more poker questions? Check out our Poker FAQ section.

Get your daily dose of poker news with the PTP Hit and Run.

Props Get Paid up to 102%+ Rakeback. Click for Offers >>>