Our Verdict:
Even the casual online tournament player will probably have heard of ‘AJKHooser1’, whose MTT exploits in the last two years have become legendary.
Real name Alex Kamberis, Hoosier has been cleaning up across the major sites, with over 35 five figure scores and beyond in the biggest tournaments the net has to offer. This has all totted up to prizes of over $1million on PokerStars and more than $500,000 on Full Tilt.
His biggest score to date came in the Full Tilt $1million Guaranteed (in July 2008), where he fought through 2,396 players to finish runner-up for a monster cash of $134,895. It actually turned out to be a rather sick month even for Kamberis’ standards, as the next week he took down the Absolute Poker $150,000 GTD for a further $27,500.
But its on Stars that he has really cut loose and is arguably the most successful $100 & $200 re-buy player the site has ever seen. He has won the $100 version an astonishing four times, the biggest cash coming in November 2007 for $40,075. In fact, he has finished in the top four of this event on a mind-boggling nine occasions! The $200 re-buy hasn’t escaped his wrath, either, and has taken it down twice (in June ’07 for $47,080 & in October ’07 for $57,475), as well as a second and fifth in the same event. Combining all of his total cashes in the two re-buy tournaments, the figure is close to $500,000. He is no one-trick pony, however, and has also taken down the notorious weekly Hundred Fifty Grand (December ’07) for a further $45,960.
Residing in Bloomington, Indiana, Kamberis is playing live tournament with increasing frequency and already has offline earnings of over $120,000. His biggest score to date was in the WPT Doyle Brunson Classic (December ’07), where he came in 30th for $57,815. In his excellent blog in Bluff he says the 2008 WSOP did not go to plan and secured just the one cash, the $5,000 NLH, where he busted in 34th for a modest $16,147. He is one of the darlings of P5’s, being regularly in their top 10 rankings as well as being a contributing writer, and has recently become an instructor on Poker X-Factor (where he has published a video of one of his $100 re-buys victories). After taking the last two years off college to focus on his poker, Kamberis now says he will return to Indiana University to finish his studies (unlike most of the young pros) and this down to earth attitude should ensure he is one of the most respected tournament players going for a long time to come.