While humanity looks closely at the Moon again with the Artemis II mission, in poker there was already a star who dreamed of getting ahead of everyone and flying to the stars. Here you can see it in this new edition of Freak Fridays.
If online poker in the 2010s taught us anything, it’s that there were players capable of doing things that seemed from another planet. And in the case of Jens Kyllönen
Just as the world gets excited again about manned trips around the Moon thanks to Artemis II, the NASA mission launched on April 1st to perform the first manned flight around the satellite in more than 50 years, it is worth remembering that there was a grinder who wanted to transform his winnings into a ticket to space. And no, Jens wasn’t tilted.
NASA carried out the first manned mission of the Artemis program, on a trip of about ten days around the Moon, something that hadn’t happened since Apollo 17 in 1972.
The Finn was one of the great predators of online PLO. Between cash games and live tournaments, he accumulated nearly six million dollars, and by age 19 he had already exploded onto the circuit by winning EPT Copenhagen 2009. He was one of those guys who seemed to be playing chess while the rest were still putting together a puzzle with pieces from another game.
Read more CodigoPLAY 2×03: poker, 2026 World Cup, Formula 1 and Bitcoin in a super episode — CodigoPoker
Jeans89 is one of the legends of online PLO but has also won live.
With that bankroll and that level of confidence, Kyllönen decided to treat himself to something much less common than a Lamborghini or a beachfront mansion: he booked a 200 thousand dollar space trip with Virgin Aeronautics. The idea was to take off in 2014, when space tourism was still being sold as “almost there, for real this time, word.” But between technical failures and tragedies in the project, the adventure never took flight.
They returned his money, of course. And then Jens did what any sensible person would do after a space trip was frustrated: he tried to buy the most incredible apartment in Finland. He didn’t have enough for that either.
Virgin Aeronautics wanted to be a pioneer in commercial space travel, but failed to achieve technology for a safe flight.
Because in poker you can beat regulars, crushers, and sharks… but not always the real estate market. Since his retirement in 2017, Kyllönen continues with an economist profile to invest his millions. In the end, he didn’t reach the stars, but let’s be honest: he was already living several blind levels above the rest, in the constellation of sharks.
Read more US$1 to compete for 200K: Ignition Poker Sundays level up
