With US high stakes online poker players out of commission for a while following the Full Tilt and PokerStars shutdown, it will be interesting to see who will step up in the absence of guys like Phil Ivey, Dan Cates, Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond and Tom “Durrrr” Dwan.

Obviously Gus Hansen doesn’t really have to do any stepping up because he’s already at the top in 2011. Hansen opened up the year with over $2 million in profits by early February, and he doesn’t seem to have lost any of that momentum either since he’s up $4 million as we head into late April. Case in point, Hansen is a shoe-in to carry the torch for the Full Tilt high stakes scene with everybody else out of the picture.

Along with Hansen, Patrik Antonius has still been active at Full Tilt with him and Hansen recently tangling in Omaha Hi/Lo; Antonius ended up winning over $350k during the session. Hopefully we’ll be seeing more of this action simply for the sake of keeping internet high stakes poker alive.

Another guy to keep an eye on is Jens “Ingenious89” Kyllönen, who won almost $1 million the other day against several studs like Hansen and Andreas “Skjervoy” Torbergsen. Speaking of Torbergsen, he lost quite a bit of money ($1.1 million) on the same day that Kyllönen won a bunch; however, he will still be a force to be reckoned with as we head into the future of online high stakes poker.

One guy that we won’t be seeing for a while – at least in the US – is Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies, who vowed to not deposit at either Full Tilt or PokerStars again. But you should expect Sahamies to keep playing on European sites since the high stakes action is likely to pick up at rooms like Party Poker, the iPoker Network and Ongame Network.