Poker Blog

Pokertube.com just did three interviews recently with some power players from the high stakes scene and poker industry. The first one is with Patrik Antonius of Full Tilt Poker.
Patrik compliments his nemesis Ziigmund for his play, yet criticizes his poker etiquette. He goes on to say how Ziigmund always beats him no matter what.

He also mentions Viktor Blom screen name isildur1. Patrik had epic wins VS Isildur1 and claims Isildur1 is an exceptional player, with big possibilities but needs more refining. He disses Harrahs and says that they don’t care about poker players etc etc.

Patrik went on to talk about online poker pros in mid stakes and how they complain the games are hard. He said that hes watched the mid stake games and the players have flaws and that they really don’t know what they are talking about.

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Isildur1 booked a $1.6 million dollar win vs Ilari Sahamies aka Ziigmund yesterday in Pot Limit Omaha over 945 hands at Full Tilt Poker. He lost about 400k to Brian Townsend over 4,300 hands. Viktor Blom aka Isildur1 was playing on 6 screens. Somewhere in the mix he was playing Patrik Antonius, but I couldn’t keep track of all the screens since they were moving from table to table to split up money. The day before on December 6th, Isildur1 won 600k from Tom Dwan aka durrrr. This big wins have taken Viktor from down 2 million to up 700k in the last 4 days.

Some photo highlights of Isildur1 VS Durrrr and Isildur1 VS Brian Townsend:

Durrrr 6 screens

Durrrr Flops boat

All durrrr or anyone really has to do is practice some pot control preflop. Isildur1 is very aggressive and will also call big bets with mediocre hands.

Once again, as I posted in other posts on this blog, Isildur1 will make huge bluff re raises having missed his draw or with complete air.

Here durrrr raises, gets re raised to 27k (which means hes most likely up against a set or 2 pair like he was), then he re raises all in for over 100k with J4 flush draw. Isildur1 is simply incapable of folding, so why
bet that much, use pot control to see if you can catch your flush.

Here is another example of trying to semibluff Isildur1, he will call, and probably even if he had only one pair instead of the two he had here.

When he has hands, he gets paid like with AA here.

Brian reluctantly calls huge bet on river.

Brian demonstrates how Isildur1 will call down big bets in Omaha with nothing even close to nuts.

Isildur1 fades the ace high flush draw of Brian on the flop and takes down huge pot. More reason for pot control until you get there.

Again, wait for big hand and get paid big vs isildur1.

Reaches 1 million stack on one of screens vs Brian Townsend

After this match with Brian Townsend, Isildur1 would take on Ziigmund and win around 1.6 million off of him. This would bring Isildur1 back into black and out of the red. He now is on a huge tear, with a upward climb of almost 3 million to bring himself out of the negative.

A simple formula IMO to beat Isildur1 would be to only play him in Pot Limit Omaha, wait
for him to have a losing session against someone else (preferable one where they hit and run him). Then wait for 12 midnight when he gets fatigued to play him. Use pot control to keep the pot size down until you flop big hands, then let him hang himself.

Isildur1 weakness:
1. Goes on major Tilt
2. Plays fatigued
3. becomes over aggressive when he misses draw or invests too much money with weak hands.
4. Calls decent sized bets with nothing on the river or weak hands. So he can be value bet to death provided you have the balls to call his all in river reraise bluffs.
5. will play Omaha rather than holdem. He is underdog in Omaha.

Isildur1 strengths
1. fearless with total disregard for money
2. huge bankroll
3. ability to play 8 screens heads up at once.
4. Very good at NL holdem. Probably one of the best NL Holdem heads up players in the world. But you won’t see him in any casino or WSOP in the USA until hes 21.

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The first battle is over, and the dust has cleared in one of the most epic poker matches of all time. This was not a single session of poker, and the war is not over.

What started as a multi-table match between Tom Dwan aka durrrr and Viktor Blom aka Isildur1, ended up with Viktor Blom taking on the top echelon of Full Tilt Poker pros, and Ilariu Sahamies aka Ziigmund. Tom Dwan would end up losing $5 million dollars to Viktor Blom. Viktor would end up using that $5 million to take on Phil Ivey and Patrik Antonius. Viktor would lose just under 3 million to Phil Ivey, and lose the biggest pot in online poker history to Patrik Antonius. Then Viktor would regain some losses Vs Patrik and take some off Ziigmund. After this Brian Townsend would come in like a white knight and take a million off of Viktor. Then after that, Ziigmund would take a chunk out of him. This truly was like watching great white sharks turn on an injured killer whale. Viktor Blom aka Isildur1 was unable to cope with them sitting out out on him after winning large sums of money and would go on perma tilt. Not only would he lose $5million that he won off of Tom Dwan, but he would lose $1.6 million of his own or staked money.

Highlights:

The mother of all online poker pots:

Now that the dust has cleared, both durrrr and Isildur1 are back in $500/1000 pot limit Omaha games and licking their wounds, and trying to re-build a monster bankroll. I see a second battle coming to the nosebleed high stakes games at Full Tilt Poker very soon.

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Unless you have been inside of a cave or on location of the latest installment of Survivor, you probably have heard about the ascension of Full Tilt high stakes newcomer Viktor Blom aka Isildur1. Isildur1 exploded onto the high stakes poker scene on Full Tilt Poker in the last month after taking nearly $5 Million off of Tom “durrrr” Dwan. Since that point, Full Tilt’s own version of “The Corporation” has stepped up to take Isildur1’s cash off of his hands.
Looking at his stats, the player that has played the most against Isildur1 besides Dwan has been Patrik Antonius. Antonius has logged over 21,000 hands against the Swede and has taken $1.7 Million off of his hands. Part of his $1.7 in winnings stems from the largest pot in online poker history. Antonius took a large $1.3 Million pot off of Isildur1 on November 22nd after flopping a wheel. Isildur1 had a higher straight draw, but missed to give Antonius the monster pot.

Ziigmund has been having some monster sessions against the Swede. Both players have exchanged Million dollar sessions, including Isildur1 taking $1.7 Million on November 29th. However, just today, Ziigmund took over $2.25 Million from the Swede to leave Ziigmund up over $1.8 Million.
Brian Townsend has been building his bankroll against Isildur1. Townsend won his biggest pot of the year against the Swede after taking $430,992 when he pushed aces on a flop and Isildur1 chased with a straight draw Townsend’s hand held up and his bankroll grew by over $200k. So far, Townsend is up $2.18 Million against Isildur1.

However, the player that is up the most against Isildur1 at present is none other than “The Man”, Phil Ivey. In just 6,372 hands, Ivey is up over $2.9 Million. Ivey started his dissection earlier in November after taking the Swede for over $1.2 Million. Since that point, Ivey has lost a couple of sessions, but never finished down overall to Isildur1. Much like his classic match with Andy Beal, it seems that when the chips are down, Ivey leaves with most of them.

At present, Isildur1 is down is down $1.68 Million in 147,294 hands. Looking at his stats, if not for his wins against durrrr, Isildur1 could potentially be down Millions more. After durrrr, the player that has lost the most to Isildur1 is David Benyamine at just over $500,000.
All indicators are that Isildur1’s run may be coming to an end. Of course, fortunes in the high stakes world can change overnight. If nothing else, Isildur1 is great for high stakes traffic on Full Tilt, which has seen a jump of around 25% in high stakes traffic since Isildur1 started playing. Who knows what the outcome of the Isildur1 saga will be. One thing is for certain, it will continue to be a wild ride.

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