About the gambling career of Peter Traply, Peter Traply is a Hungarian professional poker player. Through this article, you will learn everything about Peter Traply’s gambling career and other information about this talented player.
General Information about Peter Traply
According to research by those seeking information on Jili777, Peter Traply was born on March 27, 1987, in Budapest, Hungary. He is better known by his online poker moniker “Belabacsi”. Under that name, he has amassed millions upon millions in online MTT winnings on PokerStars. When he decided to make his results public in June 2019 on the online poker tournament database PocketFives, he immediately jumped to the top of their all-time money list. He was overtaken by Niklas “lena900” Astedt in January of the following year, 2020.
As of the current time, Traply has earned a staggering $17.7 million from online poker tournament winnings.
He also has a WSOP gold bracelet to his name. He took down the $5,000 No Limit Hold’em Shootout event for $348,755 in 2009.
Gambling Career of Peter Traply
The Beginning
Traply was only 18 years old when he decided to take poker seriously.
He happened to see a poker show broadcast on a Hungarian sports channel – it was a novelty in his home country at the time. The commentator was a Hungarian pop singer and recreational poker player – his strangely enthusiastic commentary on this new, exciting card game resonated in mainstream Hungarian popular culture at the time.
Traply was one of the hooked. He had previously played some draw poker for fun with friends, but he had only just discovered No Limit Hold’em. He was eager to learn the strategy behind it, so he accessed online forums.
While studying at university, he started playing freerolls on poker sites, his favorite being the now-defunct Bugsy’s Room. So, he was able to build his bankroll from literally zero.
He continued to play freerolls while also dabbling in micro-stakes cash games. He started to move up in stakes at the cash tables – however, he couldn’t quite make the leap in MTTs. What changed his game was receiving a strategy book by Dan Harrington, which also directed him to English-language international poker forums on the internet, where he could discuss strategy in more depth.
Eventually, he reached the highest levels in both online tournaments and cash, and so he was able to make a good living from playing poker even before graduating from university.
Gambling Career of Peter Traply – Live Tournaments
Traply’s Hendon Mob profile shows lifetime winnings of $946,427. He has accumulated that sum by cashing in just 28 different tournaments over the course of 12 years.
The first cash recorded on his profile is from November 2007, when he finished 7th in a 220,000 HUF Poker Budapest event for 2,160,000 HUF (equivalent to $12,387 at the time).
His first live cash outside his native Hungary came in the 2008 European Poker Tour in Monte Carlo. He finished 26th in the €10,000 EPT Grand Final event for €42,100. The first time he cashed for more than $100,000 was in the same event at EPT Monte Carlo a year later, in 2009. He finished 8th in the €10K tournament that time, earning €170,000, which was over $200K USD.
In November 2007, he won a HUF300,000 NLHE event at the Budapest Poker Open for 4.902 million HUF ($28,112). In August 2009, he took 5th place in a €4,000 WPT event in Bratislava, Slovakia for €25,000.
Gambling Career of Peter Traply – World Series of Poker
To date, Traply has won one WSOP gold bracelet.
He took down the $5,000 NLHE Shootout event for $348,755 in 2009. That is his largest live tournament score to date.
“Shootout” is a rare tournament format where each table plays like a “mini-tournament”. The winner of each table progresses to the next round, where new tables are drawn from the previous round’s winners.
Traply won one of these events at the 2009 World Series. He defeated American poker pro Andrew Lichtenberger to claim the title.
He also has cashes in the WSOP Main Event. He finished in 188th place out of 6,844 entrants and pocketed $38,600.
Overall, Traply has cashed in 9 World Series events for a total of $443,926.
Gambling Career of Peter Traply – Live Cash Games
When it comes to live poker, Traply has solely focused on tournaments in his career to date, staying away from live cash games. That is not the case with online poker.
He has never appeared on any televised or streamed poker shows to play live cash publicly.
Online Poker
Reference sources from those monitoring Jili777 customer service indicate that Traply is one of the most successful MTT players in the history of online poker. He currently sits in 2nd place on PocketFives’ all-time money list with career earnings of $17.7 million, trailing Sweden’s Niklas “lena900” Astedt by around $2.5 million.
Traply topped the P5 rankings from June 2019 to January 2020 – more on that later.
As we wrote in the intro, he started out as a freeroll grinder in 2005. His PokerStars screen name, “Belabacsi” translates to “Mr. Bela” from his native Hungarian. Béla is a common name in Hungary that Peter Traply chose because he thought it sounded silly.
He used to use a similar alias on Full Tilt; when he joined partypoker, he played under the moniker “HungarysHero”.
At the start of his career, Belabacsi focused on online cash games alongside the free games. He reached NL$2/$4 on his favorite site, Bugsy’s Room, within his first year of playing. Those were the highest stakes on the site with consistent action.
However, Traply is best known for his stellar online MTT results.
The first result recorded on his PocketFives profile is from August 2006. He finished in 38th place in a $30 NLHE tournament for $65. The first time he scored online for more than $10,000 was in May 2007, when he finished in 11th place in the $500 Full Tilt Online Poker Series Main Event. He pocketed no less than $18,230.
In September 2009, he finished 5th in the $10K WCOOP (World Championship of Online Poker) event for $173,420. In May 2010, he won a $1,575 NLHE SCOOP (Spring Championship of Online Poker) event for $173,420.
A year prior, in May 2009, he won an even bigger SCOOP tournament. He finished in 1st place in the $2,100 NLHE event for $312,360. That is his largest online tournament score to date.
Gambling Career of Peter Traply: Achievements
- 2005: He found poker by watching a poker show broadcast on a Hungarian sports channel. He was immediately hooked and decided to start learning strategy.
- 2009: He won his first WSOP gold bracelet. He finished 1st in the $5,000 NLHE Shootout event for $348,755.
- 2013: He won the $2,100 No Limit Holdem SCOOP (Spring Championship of Online Poker) event for $312,360 on PokerStars. That was his largest online tournament cash to date.
- 2019: He made his online MTT results public on PocketFives. It turned out that he had earned close to $17 million at that point, which made him the biggest MTT winner in the history of online poker.
Peter Traply’s PocketFives Ranking “Scandal”
It might be a bit harsh to call this a “scandal”, but this story certainly highlighted a controversial issue in online poker.
For many years, Chris Moorman was lauded as the biggest all-time online MTT winner in international poker media. Articles were published celebrating his milestones, such as cashing for a total of $10 million, and then a total of $15 million.
However, in June 2019, Traply decided to make his results public on the online poker tournament database PocketFives – users there can decide whether to display their MTT scores to others or not.
When Traply’s “Belabacsi” revealed his scores, he immediately jumped to the top of the all-time money list with $16.7 million in career earnings. It turned out that he had been ahead of Chris Moorman all along.
To make things even more complicated, Hungarian online poker player Andras “probirs” Nemeth made his P5 scores public for a short period in October 2019. He surpassed even Traply with $17.1 million in winnings at the time. Nemeth chose to hide his scores again after a few days, and so Traply remained in the #1 spot on the site.
In January 2020, Niklas “lena900” Astedt claimed the top spot. However, the question now lingers in the minds of online poker fans: could the real biggest all-time crusher still be “hiding” out there?
Above is a summary of Peter Traply’s gambling career along with related information. Hopefully, this article has provided you with useful insights.
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