– General Information –
Timofey Kuznetsov, better known as his PokerStars screen name Trueteller, is a Russian professional poker player. He was born in 1991. For most of his career as a poker player, he’s focused on high stakes online cash games, playing high volumes of No Limit Hold’em and Pot Limit Omaha as well. He’s also willing to sit at mixed game tables on the highest stakes occasionally. He’s a frequent guest in the casinos of Macau, playing high stakes live cash games too.
For a long time, Kuznetsov kept his identity secret – until 2015 when he started playing high-profile live tournaments. He’s especially fond of the Triton high roller series’ Short Deck Hold’em events, in which he cashed 3 times, one of them being a first place finish. He also won a partypoker LIVE Short Deck event in 2020.
– Key Career Dates –
- 2011: He starts playing high stakes cash games on PokerStars.
- 2015: He reveals his identity. People no longer only know his PokerStars screen name, Trueteller, but his personal name, Timofey Kuznetsov as well.
- 2015: He comes in 4th in the $500K Aria Super High Roller Bowl for $2.15 million. That is his biggest individual live tournament cash to date.
- 2019: He wins the HK$1,000,000 Triton NLHE Short Deck event for $1,859,970.
– Timofey Kuznetsov’s Career –
→ Beginnings ←
Kuznetsov got introduced to poker by his friends when he was living in Moscow. He decided to follow suit and register on PokerStars as his friends did.
At first, Kuznetsov was losing money on the site. However, with a thorough analysis of his game, he eventually became a winning player on small stakes. He shared these words of wisdom in an interview on Paul Phua’s YouTube channel:
“Really the main way I improved was I was playing a lot, I was thinking, like, really deep about anything I did. I think the best way to improve is just playing focused and really think about every small action you take and what it leads to, what your opponents might think during the hand, what they think of you, stuff like that.”
Around 2011, he started playing the high stakes cash games on Stars, $25/$50 and above. When he went up against the biggest names in online poker, such as Daniel “Jungleman” Cates and Jonas “OtB_RedBarron” Mols, the online poker community took notice. Poker news sites started writing about his results and fans started discussing him on the 2+2 Forums.
→ Live Tournaments ←
Kuznetsov has $8.784 million in live tournament earnings, according to his Hendon page. Because of his phenomenal success as an online player, he was able to buy in for the biggest tournaments in the world as soon as he started playing live events.
The very first score on his Hendon sheet is from the 2015 Aria Super High Roller Bowl, which had a $500,000 buy-in. He ended up coming in 4th place, while playing against such poker greats at the final table as Scott Seiver, Erik Seidel, or the eventual winner Brian Rast. Kuznetsov pocketed $2.15 million, thus his first result is also is his biggest single live tournament cash to date.
The next year, in 2016, he won a $50K Aria high roller tournament for $748,446.
He’s a regular feature at the Triton high roller series events. So far he racked up four ITM finishes, the biggest one being a victory at a HK$1,000,000 short deck event in Jeju in 2019. He got $1,859,970 for that victory.
It seems that Kuznetsov really took a liking to the hottest new game among high rollers, Short Deck Hold’em. He cashed in two other Triton short deck events. In fact, he only made it in the money in one Triton event which wasn’t Short Deck Hold’em.
Also, in March 2020, he took down the $100,000 No Limit Short Deck Hold’em at partypoker LIVE in Sochi, Russia for $1.2 million.
→ World Series of Poker ←
Timofey “Trueteller” Kuznetsov has yet to cash in any WSOP events.
→ Live Cash Games ←
In an interview, he talked about how he likes to play high stakes cash games in the casinos of Macau. That would explain his affection towards Short Deck Hold’em, since that game type started spreading among the East Asian high stakes cash game players originally.
In 2017, Gus Hansen posted a picture to his Instagram which showed “Trueteller” Kuznetsov in Bobby’s Room, playing against Brian Rast and Daniel “Jungleman” Cates.
Bobby’s Room, named after Bobby Baldwin, is the most famous super high stakes cash game room in the world. It’s located inside the Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas, NV.
→ Online Poker ←
Trueteller is one of the best known names in online poker.
His HighstakesDB chart looks very impressive. After 599,030 tracked hands played on $25/$50 or higher, he’s $3,095,168 in profit. These hands were played between March 2011 and March 2018. This doesn’t mean that he stopped playing, rather the site stopped tracking hands.
Although Trueteller is also an avid mixed game player, the most common game of his choice is still the classic No Limit Hold’em.
The biggest pot he played on record is from January 2016. He was playing 3-handed against Andres “Educa-p0ker” Artinano and a player with the screen name Kanu7. Trueteller ended up rivering an 8-high flush against Educa-p0ker’s King-high straight, so Trueteller took down a $236,399 pot.
In February 2018, “Educa-p0ker” Artinano, one of Trueteller’s most frequent opponents online, was interviewed by Doug Polk on his popular YouTube channel about who he thinks the top 10 online NLHE cash game players in the world are. Artinano named Treuteller as the best in the world.
“Trueteller, I think he’s the best player, probably the most complete player ever in poker. He’s the best 6-Max No Limit player, and I’ll say why. (…) Let’s say we sat down today, we played 1,000 hands, he would commit more mistakes than RedBarron, Linus, probably than me, than many players. But he’s so fast at adapting, at learning the games, at seeing his own mistakes. He’s such a hard worker” – Educa-p0ker said about him after ranking him number 1 on his top online cash players list.
In September 2015, Trueteller won $302,000 in cash games on PokerStars within 24 hours. He played $100/$200 PLO and $1,000/$2,000 (!) 2-7 Triple Draw against, among others, Jean-Robert Bellande, Jason Mercier and Phil Ivey.
He’s used to battling the best of the best online. He’s had 3-table heads-up action against Tom “durrrr” Dwan on Full Tilt in 2015. He’s also taken on Viktor “Isildur1” Blom in a $1,000/2,000 8-game session in 2017.
→ Sponsorships ←
In September 2018, it was announced that Kuznetsov is joining Team Partypoker, a line-up of famous poker pros who are signed to promote the online poker room.
→ Scandals ←
Getting Aces Cracked Twice in One Hand
This is hardly anything that can be considered a scandal – however, Trueteller did suffer a scandalously bad badbeat against OtB_RedBarron.
They were playing $200/$400 No Limit Hold’em heads-up on PokerStars. The classic cooler, Aces vs. Kings was dealt – Trueteller got, what it seemed, the better of it.
As one might predict, they got it all pre-flop. They agreed to run the board twice. For Trueteller’s demise, both flops had a King on them. No help came for him on later streets, so despite being an 80% favorite, he lost both halves of the $160,000 pot.
– Timofey Kuznetsov on Social Media –
Twitter: https://twitter.com/trueteller
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