Wiktor Malinowski’s Life: Net Worth, Biggest Profits, Losses and Private Life

– General Introduction –

Wiktor Malinowski, also known by his online moniker “Limitless”, is a Belarussian-born Polish professional poker player and former professional handball player. He was born on August 2nd, 1994.

Malinowski was an international pro handball player, representing Poland. It was during his long recovery time after a knee injury when he found poker, and started playing freeroll tournaments and micro-stakes cash games online in 2014. Within two years, he made it to the highest stakes.

He’s mainly known as an online cash game player. However, he also has $4.4 million in live tournament winnings, which includes a Super High Roller Bowl Europe victory for $3.690 million in August 2021.

In March 2021, he took on Fedor “CrownUpGuy” Holz in a brief online heads-up challenge but lost. In August 2020, he won what was the biggest NLHE cash game pot in online poker history, $842,439, against Michael Addamo on Natural8-GGNetwork. However, that record was broken shortly after.

– Key Career Dates –

• 2014: He starts playing online poker for recreation after a knee injury forces him to take time off of his professional handball career.
  
• 2020: He wins a $842,439 pot against Michael Addamo in a $500/$1,000 No Limit Hold’em cash game on Natural8-GGNetwork. It was the biggest NLHE online cash game pot ever at the time.
  
• 2021: He wins the $250,000 Super High Roller Bowl Europe Main Event in Cyprus for $3.690 million. That is the biggest single live tournament cash of his career to date.
  

– Wiktor Malinowski’s Career –

→ Beginnings ←

As we wrote in our intro, Malinowski was a professional handball player before getting into poker. In that regard, he’s very much akin to former pro basketball player and WSOP bracelet winner Joao Viera from Portugal.

However, Malinowski suffered a serious knee injury at a young age. He played online poker, freerolls and micro-stakes cash games, to pass time during recovery. He slowly started to build his bankroll.

After a while, he was faced with a choice: he either returned to the handball court, or continued making his money on the virtual poker felt. Here’s how he reminisced about his dilemma in a 2019 profile piece by PokerNews.com:

“I knew I needed to make a choice what to do and I picked to play poker because it gives you the freedom and you don’t need to deal with injuries. It’s the same as a sport, because I love the games, but poker is more of a mind game, so I love it a lot.”

→ Live Tournaments ←

Malinowski has $4.4 million in live tournament cashes, according to his Hendon page. That sum is the product of ITM finishes in just 6 live events over the course of 4 years.

In the PokerNews article cited above, he talks about that he made the decision to jump into the live high roller tournament scene in 2016, after he built up a hefty bankroll as an online cash game pro.

However, his first recorded live cash is from April 2017. He came in 187th in the £5,300 No Limit Hold’em event for £7,500 at the partypoker MILLIONS Live at the Dusk Till Dawn Casino in Nottingham, UK. The first time he made a live tourney score for over $100K was in April 2019. He took 7th place in the €100,000 NLHE EPT Super High Roller in Monte Carlo for €264,860 ($295,217).

In August 2019, he finished 17th in the £100,000 Triton London Main Event and won £192,000 ($233,661).

Malinowski’s big break on the live felt came in August 2021. He took down the $250,000 Main Event at the Super High Roller Bowl Europe in Cyprus, beating Seng Leow from Malaysia heads-up for the title at the end. He won $3.690 million this time, which is by far his biggest single live tournament score to date.

→ World Series of Poker ←

Wiktor Malinowski is yet to win his first WSOP gold bracelet.

In fact, he hasn’t even cashed in any live World Series events yet, only online. He made it into the money in 10 events at the 2021 WSOP Online on Natural8-GGNetwork. Out of those ten, the largest cash was $41,624, which he got for finishing 5th in the $200 No Limit Hold’em – Flip & Go Flip event.

→ Live Cash Games ←

While Malinowski’s always focused more on cash games than tournaments in online poker, that’s not necessarily true for live poker.

However, he did appear on PokerGO’s live streamed $500/$1,000 NLHE cash game session from Cyprus, right after he took down the SHRB Europe Main Event for over $3 million. His opponents included, among others, online poker legends Daniel “Jungleman” Cates, Mikita “fish2013” Badziakouski, and Timofey “trueteller” Kuznetsov.

→ Online Poker ←

Malinowski plays under his famous screen name “Limitless” on PokerStars.

While he’s been mostly a cash game player for most of his career, his online cash results aren’t actually tracked by any poker database sites. However, it was widely reported that in August 2020, he won the biggest Hold’em cash game pot in online poker history.

At a $500/$1,000 NLHE table, he got dealt pocket Aces over Australian poker pro Michael Addamo’s pocket King’s in one hand. As expected, the two were all-in by the river. Since no help came for Adamo, Malinowski bagged a massive, $842,439 chunk of cash.

Michael Addamo on the receiving end of this cooler from Wiktor Malinowski for a $900K pot at our VIP Games#coolerbro#natural8 pic.twitter.com/gq8u8SQxDY

— N8 Best Online Poker & Casino Promotions #GGPoker (@natural8) August 11, 2020

However, his record of biggest NLHE pot was broken by Ali Imsirovic in just a few weeks, who won $974,632 off of Tan “tan4321” Xuan also on GGPoker. Meanwhile, the overall biggest cash game pot in online poker history, not specific to Hold’em, still belongs to Patrik Antonius who won $1.357 million in a single hand of $500/$1,000 Pot Limit Omaha against Viktor “Isildur1” Blom back in November 2009.

Outside cash games, “Limitless” Malinowski has claimed some major online MTT scores as well.

In May 2021, he took down the $10,300 buy-in GG Super MILLION$ for $394,852. He beat 2019 WSOP Main Event runner-up finisher Dario Sammartino from Italy heads-up for the title. In April 2020, Malinowski came in 2nd in the $25,500 No Limit Hold’em event at the PokerMasters Online on partypoker for $352,000.

→ Scandals ←

His short heads-up challenge against Fedor Holz

In March 2021, amid a bulk of other high profile heads-up matches between poker players, Wiktor Malinowski took on the German Fedor “CrownUpGuy” Holz in their own heads-up duel.

The game was $100/$200 No Limit Hold’em cash game on Natural8-GGNetwork. However, the duration of this challenge was much shorter than the other match-ups, such as Polk vs. Negreanu or any of the Galfond challenges. Malinowski and Holz only agreed to play 1,600 hands.

The challenge was played out in just four sessions, and Holz came out the victor by $90,374.

Before the game, Malinowski vowed to play drunk, to show his level of confidence in his abilities. He did follow through on his promise, and live streamed himself drinking wine while battling Holz. As you can tell by the result, it did not work out for him.

However, this wasn’t the most controversial aspect of the match by far.

Doug Polk, a popular poker YouTuber and elite heads-up NLHE player who just came off of winning his own highly publicized challenge against Daniel Negreanu, was doing commentary for stream of the first session. However, he was so perplexed by some of the plays the two players made that he accused them of staging the whole event. His frustration grew to the point where he quit mid-stream, and was never back commenting for later sessions.

In the end, @UpswingPoker cut their coverage of Fedor 🆚 Limitless early (though not as early as this edit suggests) as @DougPolkVids felt like the match was staged.

(Part 2/2) pic.twitter.com/eXP8KlEZwo

— 🃏 David Lappin 🃏 (@dklappin) March 5, 2021