Five Poker Stars Hailing From Minnesota
Minnesota is known as the Land of 10,000 Lakes but it also has a knack for producing excellent poker players. The state’s five biggest winning live poker tournament players have $12,068,841 in combined winnings. All but two of its top 20 have won seven-figures from this crazy game!
Who are the five biggest poker tournament winners from Minnesota? These five heroes.
Blake Bohn Tops The All-Time Money Listing in Minnesota
Blake Bohn hails from the awesomely named Savage, Minnesota and now lives in Shakopee, also in Minnesota. Bohn has traveled the length and breadth of the United States playing in tournaments. He does more than playing, actually, he often crushes the opposition.
Bohn had a dozen or so decent live cashes to his name before enjoying a breakout year in 2011. A fifth-place finish in a $3,125 buy-in event in Chicago netted Bohn $47,903. He ran deep in the 2011 WSOP Main Event a few months later and banked $54,851.
His first six-figure prize came in 2013 when Bohn won a $3,200 event in Hammond, Chicago for $288,171. Two more six-figure scores came Bohn’s way in 2013, including a runner-up finish in $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em event at the WSOP in Las Vegas.
Bohn has $3,095,037 in live MTT winnings despite never having a score of over $290,000.
Poker Legend Lyle Berman Calls Minnesota Home
Lyle Berman is a Minnesota poker legend, one with a shade under $2.7 million in live tournament winnings. The man from Minneapolis, Minnesota has won even more from high stakes cash games.
The first of Berman’s three WSOP bracelets came in 1989 in a $1,500 Limit Omaha event. He won a $2,500 No-Limit Hold’em event in 1992 and a $5,000 No-Limit 2-7 Draw event in 1994.
Berman doesn’t play many tournaments these days; he’s 79-years-old for a start. He’s a very successful businessman too so only plays poker for pleasure.
Ryan Laplante The High Volume Minnesota Grinder
Ryan Laplante lives in Las Vegas but Brainerd, Minnesota will always be home. Laplante has a WSOP bracelet to his name and $2,504,250 in live tournament winnings. He won that gold in 2016 in a $565 Pot-Limit Omaha event. Seven other WSOP final table appearances show Laplante’s famed consistency.
Laplante loves PLO. He not only won his bracelet in that discipline, but he also enjoyed a victory in a $10,000 PLO event at the 2019 Poker Masters. His 2017 WSOP runner-up finish came in a PLO8 event.
He’s no slouch in the online poker world either with $2,384,501 in earnings. Laplante plays a ton of volume which is what all the best players do.
Patrick Mahoney The Two Million Dollar Man
Winona, Minnesota is where you find Patrick Mahoney, the man with $2,077,101 in live tournament winnings. Almost a quarter of that total came in 2016 in a $3,500 buy-in event in Hollywood. Mahoney finished first from a field of 760 and got his hands on the winner’s trophy and $564,227.
Mahoney came close to beating that impressive score, in 2018. He reached the final table of the WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic in Las Vegas. Mahoney fell in seventh-place for $265,570. Winning, as Dylan Linde did, would have resulted in a $1,631,468 score.
Mike “Schneids” Schneider
Mike Schneider of Minneapolis, Minnesota is a name known well by the online poker community. Schneider was, and probably still is, one of the world’s best limit hold’em players. He specialized in short-handed limit hold’em games and played for the highest stakes possible.
Schneider has more than $1.7 million in live tournament winnings. A massive $1 million of that sum came from his first-ever live cash! Schneider won the $10,500 partypoker.com Million V in 206, which was part of the Card Player Cruises tour. He may not have ever reproduced that form in the live arena, but is still an inductee of the Minnesota Poker Hall of Fame.