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Interview with Tom “durrrr” Dwan by Subject: Poker

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Viktor Blom, aka Isildur1, is known across the poker world for his epic swings in high stake poker games. His $5 Million win in real money poker against Tom Dwan, followed by his loss of around $4.5 Million to Brian Hasting a couple of years ago highlighted his monumental swings.
In a recent interview with Bluff Europe, he talked about his rise and his downfall in 2009. He told Bluff Europe that he played marathon session with Dwan that lasted up to 18 hours at a time. He also stated that he felt that he was in the zone and could take on anyone in the world. That is one reason he chose to multi-table Phil Ivey, Tom Dwan, and Patrik Antonius at the same time.

Viktor Blom was then asked about his downfall. He first response was Pot-Limit Omaha and then he mentioned that he was not in the best physical shape and was not eating healthy. His final accusations, which have been subsequently removed from Bluff Europe’s interview dealt with what he felt was collusion on the part of Cole South and Brian Hastings.

“And yes, the collusion. I think they were angle-shooting, and cowards. One time I remember playing Cole South in a 300-600 game and I was so tilted that I was 3-betting every hand. And he was up and suddenly he quits! I said, “wtf?” He says sorry, he has to go. I thought to myself wtf is he doing? Then, seconds later, Hastings sits down (laughs). They were probably sitting next to each other! Then he beat me for $4.5 million.

In one session at 500-1000, running 3,2 mill over EV, I’d call a raise on the turn with a wrap and **** miss so many times in pots over 200k. It was so sick, and in the end he was keep typing in the chat when I was tilt and he ran like god, that he had to quit, I mean why quit a session like that, so sick of it. Maybe plan was Townsend or South was gonna play again?”

Other than data mining hand histories on the site, no other collusion has been proven thus far in regards to the incident with Hastings, South, and Isildur1. Hastings had his red pro status suspended due to the data mining incident.
Chances are that Isildur1’s first answer of Pot-Limit Omaha had more to do with his loss than any data mining done by players. It has been proven regularly that Blom is a virtual fish in the game, at least among high stakes players.
Blom is currently a PokerStars Team Pro and has regularly been featured in Superstar Showdown Challenges where he will play all challengers for $150,000 spread across four tables of either $50-$100 PL Omaha or $50-$100 NL Hold’em. Some smaller $5-$10 challenges have been held for online qualifiers.

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Noah Stephens-Davidowitz or NoahSD on Two Plus Two has released partial data of Phil Ivey and David Benyamine’s debts to Full Tilt Poker. It is not exactly stated in the article on SubjectPoker.com who the source is from Full Tilt Poker, but the evidence seems real. It is data from notes on their poker accounts and may not include payments made offline.

NoahSD reports:
Early in the data, Phil Ivey’s account was frequently debited directly for some, though not all, of the money that he was loaned there. For example, Ivey borrowed $3 million in six $500,000 installments spread throughout July and August 2009. He then repaid $1 million on October 29th, borrowed another $500,000 on November 13th, and then made two separate $1 million repayments on November 20th and 22nd respectively.4 Ivey’s results on the datamining site HighstakesDB suggest that he earned approximately $5 million in cash games on Full Tilt Poker in October and November of 2009, so this success may be the reason that he repaid. (Ivey went on to borrow $1 million on November 29th.)

However, this pattern stops. The last repayment in our data (for $1 million) happened in the spring of 2010, but after this date, Ivey received eight additional loans, ending in January 2011 and totalling $3,215,000, bringing the total difference between loans and repayments in our data to $6,215,000.5 It is of course possible that Ivey repaid some or all of this debt off of the site, but Tiltware’s reference to a “large sum that he owes the site” and Ivey’s historical pattern of repaying through his account suggest that he did indeed owe the site money as recently as June 1st.

So it is possible that Ivey still owed the site $6,215,000. This was reported (but not with exact figures) when Full Tilt Poker made a statement a few months back after Phil Ivey filed lawsuit against them:

Full Tilt Poker responded to Phil Ivey’s lawsuit:
“Contrary to his sanctimonious public statements, Phil Ivey’s meritless lawsuit is about helping just one player – himself. In an effort to further enrich himself at the expense of others, Mr. Ivey appears to have timed his lawsuit to thwart pending deals with several parties that would put money back in players’ pockets. In fact, Mr. Ivey has been invited — and has declined — to take actions that could assist the company in these efforts, including paying back a large sum of money he owes the site. Tiltware doubts Mr. Ivey’s frivolous and self-serving lawsuit will ever get to court. But if it does, the company looks forward to presenting facts demonstrating that Mr. Ivey is putting his own narrow financial interests ahead of the players he professes to help.”

Phil Ivey playing craps image from Pocket Fives
“Mr. Ivey has been invited — and has declined — to take actions that could assist the company in these efforts, including paying back a large sum of money he owes the site.”

David Benyamine

In addition to Phil Ivey owing the company money, David Benyamine also had substantial loans from Full Tilt Poker:

In 2008, David Benyamine apparently owed Full Tilt Poker money, and at least some of this debt was being repaid directly from his salary, wages, and bonuses. This is quite clear from the notes on his FTP account. He received many payments from Full Tilt during this time period directly into his account, and almost all of them were taken out of the account on the same day with the note “for a loan collection.”7

In 2008, Benyamine received directly to his account a $15,000 per month base salary, roughly $12,000 more per month on average from rakeback and hourly wages, roughly $4,000 per month in logo bonuses and other marketing bonuses, and roughly $10,000 per month in other payments. So, assuming that our sample is typical, his annual earnings sent directly to his FTP account were roughly $500,000 at the time. (It is of course likely that he received money off of the site as well.) However, it appears that almost all of this was going directly back to the site to repay Benyamine’s debt.

As of right now all real money poker play in USA and abroad is closed on Full Tilt Poker. There was a leak over a month ago that the site was sold to a European investor, but this seems less likely now.

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