All it takes is one look to know that Montreal Quebec poker player Erik Cajelais is clearly a guy that isn’t about to be pushed around or all to easily messed with or intimidated. The heavily tattooed and bulked up player instantly gives the impression that he just might be more than capable of holding his own in tough situations.
In reality, while all that is true, especially on the felts, Erik has also been know to be a bit of a softy when it comes to good causes like the Full Tilt Mariam Foundation Montreal Open charity poker tournament that he has supported whole heartedly from the get go. All tough guy appearances aside, it only requires taking a quick peek at Cajelais’ poker track record to eliminate any remaining doubt. The Full Tilt “Red Pro”, plays online on the site under his own name, “Erik Cajelais” but doesn’t appear to spend much time online away from traveling the live poker tournament circuit. Erik is often found playing high stakes tournaments and cash games around the globe though, particularly the Pot Limit Omaha and No Limit Hold’em games that are his bread and butter.
Cajelais sits about 16th on the Canadian All Time Live Tournament Money Lists, with over $2,250,000 in “official” major event career winnings since he started to seriously attack the circuit. Like many others, Erik started really “breaking out” just after the “Moneymaker Boom”. Cajelais already owns one bracelet, having won the World Series of Poker Europe Pot Limit Hold’em/Omaha £2500 Event #2 in 2009 for the equivalent of over $172,000. Erik also has the bragging rights of winning a $5000 buy-in World Poker Tour Event at the Bellagio Five Diamond Classic back in December of 2006, the first place finish leaving him raking in a cool $405,000. He had another heads up finish in 2007 at a $7500 buy-in World Poker Tour Event worth $225,000; clearly the popular circuits have treated his bankroll well.
His largest cash so far however, came in the £20,000 “High Roller” London Open PokerStars EPT, only a week after his WSOPE bracelet victory. The 2nd place finish seen him taking home another pile of freshly banded cash adding up to the equivalent of over $530,000 USD. So far over his career, Erik has won $400,000 or better on at least three occasions, with anything less than $100,000 almost qualifying as a “min-cash” for Cajelais, when you consider how high his average winnings are.
Erik has been very close to adding to his bracelet count on several occasions; aside from this latest final table in the 2011 WSOP, in another past $5000 WSOP Pot Limit Omaha Event, he came very close with a second place finish that ended up seeing Cajelais bagging up another $483,755 for his roll.
To date, Erik has earned over $800,000 of his total just in World Series Of Poker events, both here in North America and across the pond in WSOPE events. Cajelais has gone deep in the money in at least one event at WSOP for the past five years running, including his most recent 5th place final table finish in the 2011 WSOP $1500 “Shoot-out” No Limit Hold’em Event #13. This time, Cajelais’ performance was worth almost $80,000 dollars, “peanuts” for the pro, but an impressive result by most other measures.
Now with 20 major tournament cashes under his belt, and the 2011 WSOP still having quite a few events left to go at the time of this article, Canadian poker fans will want to keep an eye out for Erik’s name on the results, chances are he is far from done collecting cash and titles.
