Finnish "Monarch": Ossi Ketola's record-breaking pots and scandals

The name Ossi Ketola is once again making headlines. In early September, his online casino Duel became an official partner of the Triton Super High Roller Series at the Jeju and North Cyprus stops. In addition, it was announced that "Monarch" would once again run a series of expensive heads-up matches in South Korea. Just a few days later, he provoked a clash at a political rally in Helsinki and was detained by police. These extremes sum up Ketola. 

The source of "Monarch's" wealth

Ketola had an entrepreneurial streak from a young age. At just 14 years old, he founded his first company, which rented out boats, fishing rods and camping gear in his hometown. That summer business turned out to be a success.

But before that venture, Ketola, by his own admission, was an "annoying scammer" in the online game Runescape. The young "Monarch" would offer to double other users' in-game items, and once he received them, he would simply log out of his account. Ossi learned a lesson from these scams — according to him, they became motivation for him to fight fraudsters in gambling.

At the age of 18, Ketola took out a loan of €11,000 and founded his main business — the site CSGOEmpire. The service offers gambling games where the currency is skins from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Users can play roulette or coin flips, open cases or place bets, wagering cosmetic items from the online shooter, the value of which can reach hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Ketola claimed that he created CSGOEmpire to fight against other similar sites that operated illegally and without oversight. According to the Finn, he personally exposed numerous such casinos involved in fraud. 

From 2016 to 2020, CSGOEmpire built an audience of 5 million users and became one of the largest platforms for skin gambling. In 2023, it successfully transitioned to Counter-Strike 2. Analysts estimate the site's value at several hundred million euros, and Ketola himself has said it brings him $4 million monthly.

In 2025, Ossi Ketola launched Duel — a crypto casino and betting platform. The platform positions itself as maximally transparent and competes with Stake and other crypto casinos. The legendary Finnish player Patrik Antonius became a business partner and investor in the project.

Ketola publicly stated that because of Duel, his competitors would lose billions of dollars, and he estimated the platform's monthly profit at $10 million. A year after the launch, as we mentioned, the crypto casino reached sponsor status for the Triton Series. 

There is no exact data on Ketola's net worth, but analysts estimate it at $25-$50 million. However, the real figure could be significantly higher if CSGOEmpire's value reaches the upper bound of industry forecasts. And it does seem that the Finn actually possesses a much larger sum, given how much money he wagers in poker. 

Appearance on the poker scene

Patrik Antonius is not only a business partner but also Ketola's poker mentor. It was the Hall of Fame member who became the coach for the young businessman and helped him break into the world of high rollers.

The poker community first heard about Ketola only at the end of 2024, when he made a successful run at the Triton series in Monte Carlo. There he registered four cashes, including $2,970,000 for second place in the $150,000 No-Limit Hold'em 8-Handed tournament. In the heads-up match, "Monarch" lost to Vladimir Korzinin. However, "Gambledore" gave the trophy to Ketola, saying: "I have nowhere to keep it." That trip earned the Finn a total of $3,578,000.

A month later, Ketola played in WSOP Paradise. There, his results were more modest — only one cash, but a rather large one. The Finnish businessman finished fifth in the $100,000 NLH Triton Main Event and took home $1,172,000. Only Alexander Zubov, Fedor Holz, João Vieira and Alex Foxen finished above him. 

Since then, there have been no major wins in Ketola's tournament career, only two more cashes at Triton and The Festival Weekend series in Tallinn. However, total earnings of $5,035,000 allow "Monarch" to hold seventh place on the Finnish All-Time Money List.  

A fan of high-stakes heads-up matches

Ossi Ketola values expensive — no, even very expensive — heads-up matches far more than tournaments. Matches against elite professionals with huge buy-ins and no possibility of rebuying, where the winner takes it all — it is precisely in this format that "Monarch" built his reputation in poker. 

Ketola calls these kinds of games his favourites because of the adrenaline they bring. And in these heads-up matches, the Finn revealed himself as a very aggressive player, willing to play a wide range of hands and make very high bets. Describing his style, he said he likes it when his opponents suffer:

"I like causing pain in poker, especially when seven nits are sitting in tournaments sweating over their bankroll. I like making them break. Almost nobody in poker has any character, everyone's just a bloody boring nit, so I love creating chaos."

The warm-up for Ketola's future crazy heads-up matches took place in Tallinn in August 2025. "Monarch's" games against Elias Talvitie, Kayhan Mokri and Dan "Jungleman" Cates were streamed, while a few more sessions were private. Out of the three public matches, Ketola won two and earned €2,000,000, losing only to Talvitie, who took home €1,000,000.

Soon after, Ossi Ketola travelled to Cyprus for the first-ever Onyx Super High Roller series. To start, the Finn once again played against Kayhan Mokri, but this time each of them put $2 million on the line. At one point, the Norwegian was down by a three-to-one chip deficit, but managed to fight his way back.

In the decisive hand, Mokri made a full house on the turn and got $4 million richer. Ketola immediately proposed a $5 million rematch, but his opponent declined, citing an early departure from Cyprus. When it was suggested he find another opponent, "Monarch" called the rest of the players cowards (to put it mildly). The Finn still tried to lure Paul Phua or Talvitie to the table, but Elias refused, and the Malaysian businessman was never invited.

Ketola's next opponent in Cyprus was Dan Cates. The high rollers played six matches, constantly raising the stakes. The buy-in was $1 million for the first two, then increased to $3 million, reached $5 million for the fourth and fifth matches, and finished at $6 million. Jungleman started with a win, then lost two in a row, but went on to beat Ketola again in the last three matches.

The 12-hour session ended when Cates hit a pair of aces on the flop, while Ketola could only make a lower pair on the river. The two-time WSOP champion earned roughly $15,000,000 over this long session — the biggest win in a single stream in poker history.

Right after these matches, Ketola admitted to Onyx series founder Rob Yong that he uses these kinds of heads-up matches not just for fun, but also to promote Duel.

7 days and $63 million in Jeju

In September 2025, Ketola continued his run of heads-up matches at the Triton series in Jeju. This time, "Monarch" decided not to limit himself to two sessions and played 17 matches against five different opponents, with the total buy-in amount reaching $63 million.

Ketola's first opponent was Viktor Malinowski. In one hand, "Limitless" lost a $3,780,000 pot, but both matches still went to the Polish top reg, who won $6 million. "Monarch" then had more success against Alex Foxen. In the first session, the Finn took $2 million, but then lost $11 million over two matches.

However, Ketola won back all these losses in the final game against Foxen. It ended with what became the biggest pot in the history of poker streams. On the turn, the American reg made a flush, but on the river "Monarch" hit a full house and shoved all-in for $6.1 million. Foxen took a long time to think, but eventually called, forming a $10,990,000 pot, which went to Ketola.

Next, Ossi Ketola traded wins with Elias Talvitie in matches worth $3 million each and lost three out of four sessions against Kayhan Mokri, finishing them down $5 million. And the epic finale of the Jeju trip was the games against Bjorn Li.

In the first four matches against Li, the buy-ins were $2 million, and the Hong Kong player won three of them. After that, the opponents agreed to a final rematch with buy-ins of $8 million each. And in this session, "Monarch" broke the record for the biggest pot in the history of poker streams, which he himself had set just four days earlier.

The Finn shoved all-in preflop with pocket nines, while Li called with a pair of eights. However, the board didn't help the Hong Kong player, and Ketola scooped a $12.7 million pot.

Big wins over Foxen and Lee helped "Monarch" recover most of the money he'd lost. The Finnish high roller ended the heads-up series in Jeju "only" $2 million in the red. But if you look at all the cash-game streams from 2025, Ketola's losses come to nearly $21 million. Still, he takes it all very calmly: "I wouldn't risk money that could genuinely change my life."

"Monarch's" scandals

If Ossi Ketola limited himself to such thrilling heads-up duels, the public would probably see him as a guarantor of table action. But because of his constant antics, "Monarch" has quite a few fair critics.

Ketola has repeatedly made racist and antisemitic remarks on social media and streams, for which his accounts on X and Kick were banned. The Duel and CSGOEmpire pages were also banned on the former Twitter. And after losing $15 million to Dan Cates, "Monarch" issued an insulting challenge to Daniel Negreanu. One X user asked the Finn whether he would play heads-up against the Canadian, to which he replied: "I'd love that. I think he's such a gay, I'd smash him." Negreanu did not respond to the challenge.

In March 2024, Ketola paid several people to run onto the stage during the quarter-final of the PGL Major Copenhagen CS2 tournament between G2 Esports and MOUZ. The participants in the stunt damaged the trophy and were detained by police. "Monarch" claimed responsibility and explained that it was a protest against G2's partnership with the CSGORoll platform, which competes with CSGOEmpire. 

This stunt backfired on CSGOEmpire itself. Ketola had planned to hold his own tournament under the platform's banner in April 2024 with a $50,000 prize pool. However, after the invasion of the Major's stage, several teams and the event's producers withdrew from participating and condemned CSGOEmpire and the stunt's participants. Ketola's site later published an apology for the incident.

The standoff with CSGORoll didn't end there. In December 2024, investigative blogger Steven "Coffeezilla" Findeisen reported that CSGOEmpire had offered him $20,000 as a reward for investigating CSGORoll. The condition was that he not mention anything compromising about Empire. The blogger refused.

A year later, Ketola sponsored British extreme tourist Miles Routledge's challenge of a 40-day water fast. In mid-September, the Finnish businessman published a post about the blogger's death. Within hours, this caused Routledge's survival odds on Polymarket to crash from 68% to 18%. However, Miles turned out to be alive, and Ketola later called the post a "shitpost for the sake of chaos."

Last month, Duel's subsidiary fighting promotion, Duel Arena, found itself at the centre of a scandal. The organisation held an event in Orlando during which one of the fighters performed a Nazi salute right in the ring, and one of the spectators displayed a flag with a swastika. In addition, a racist slur was used against a black fighter during Duel's broadcasts. The event was condemned by US Senator Rick Scott, Florida state legislator Anna Eskamani, and Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer. 

Detention in Helsinki and a new heads-up in Jeju

September has only just begun, but Ossi Ketola has already managed to make headlines in both of his "specialities." A few days ago, "Monarch" showed up at an anti-fascist rally in Helsinki dressed as SpongeBob along with his entourage, streaming live on Kick the whole time. According to PokerStars ambassador David Lappin, the businessman provoked the activists by shouting racist insults and performing a Nazi salute. 

The protesters chased Ketola off the square and pursued him until his personal security put the highroller in a car and drove him away from the scene. Shortly after, local police stopped their car and briefly detained "Monarch's" group for their own safety. 

And the day before, Ketola had already played his first high-stakes heads-up at the Triton stop in Jeju. The Finn's opponent was once again Viktor Malinovsky. Right at the start of the session, there was another headline-grabbing "show." A man claiming to be scandal-plagued influencer Andrew Tate, who is under investigation on charges of human trafficking and rape, allegedly came up to the table. 

This "Tate" performed a dance and kissed Malinovsky, leaving a lipstick mark on his cheek. However, social media users recognised him as the blogger's body double actor, who regularly appears as a dealer on Duel's blackjack streams. 

Malinovsky won the first session with a $1 million buy-in, hitting a cooler on the river with 5♥️, which gave him a full house against Ketola's straight. However, the next two matches, with buy-ins of $2 million each, went to "Monarch." 

The Finn was about to go to sleep, but «Limitless» talked him into one more match, raising the buy-in to $3 million. Malinovskiy couldn't fight back. He was behind Ketola almost the entire time, and in the final hand he fell into yet another «Monarch» trap. On the turn, Ketola made two pair with A♦️8♦️ and check-called, then on the blank river he shoved and forced his opponent to go all-in with just top pair. By the end of the heads-up match, Malinovskiy ended up down $6 million. 

Ossi Ketola has several more heads-up matches scheduled in Jeju. In addition, «Monarch» will play alongside Patrik Antonius in the $200,000 Invitational tournament, which kicks off on September 12th. We're definitely guaranteed more insanely expensive hands to come. And new scandals, presumably, aren't far off either. For now Ketola is getting away with it, but for how long?