Look Out: Jonathan Karamalikis

Jonathan Karamalikis has won millions in online tournaments since he began playing poker almost six years ago. He has added more than $600,000 from playing in live tournaments since he turned 18 and was able to play in the casinos in Australia, his native country. The 22-year-old pro hails from Adelaide, on the southern coast of the island continent.
Thanks to Karamalikis, the PokerStars Asia Pacific Poker Tour Sydney Grand Final trophy remained on home soil for another year in December 2010. He won the title and $459,510 AUD in prize money after topping a field of 289 players. His win made for the fourth consecutive year that an Aussie has won the APPT season finale. Karamalikis is now in the top 10 on Australia’s all-time money-winning list. He defeated PokerStars qualifier Ben McLean (a fellow Aussie) heads up for the tournament title. Team PokerStars pro Daniel Negreanu was also at that final table.
“This is the most meaningful win for me,” said Karamalikis. “This is obviously the biggest [tournament] I’ve ever won, by far. It’s quite a prestigious title, so I’m really glad to have it under my belt.”
Karamalikis has close to six pages of online results in his player profile, and he cracked the top 10 in the Card Player Online Player of the Year (OPOY) race in April, thanks to a second-place finish in a PokerStars Sunday 500 event, for $64,812. At the time of this writing, he had 4,920 OPOY points in 2010, which was good for 90th place. His largest online cash came in a Full Tilt Online Poker Series X no-limit hold’em six-max rebuy tournament in 2008, where he finished second for $157,000.
His live-tournament results have come primarily in Australia, due to his age, but that should change now that he is 22 years old. He scored his first World Series of Poker cash in 2010 in the $10,000 no-limit hold’em main event. He finished 446th out of 7,319 players, for $31,647. It was his third-largest live-tournament cash, with the APPT Sydney win taking the top spot, and a runner-up finish in a $610 no-limit hold’em rebuy event at the 2009 Aussie Millions occupying the second position.
His list of live-tournament cashes should start to make up some ground on his lengthy list of online results in the coming year. Players will start to look out for Karamalikis on the live-tournament felt the same way that they have looked out for him online during the last couple of years. ♠