They may only come in short bursts every few months but you can be guaranteed that when Viktor "Isildur1" Blom comes to the high stakes tables at PokerStars that he will be giving you nothing less than 100% high octane action.
That has certainly been the case since his latest return three days ago. Since then we've been treated to some epic PLO matches, six figure pots, some NLHE and also we've seen him try his hand at the fixed limit games, namely FLO8 and 2-7 triple draw.
Barely stopping for breath, let alone sleep, Blom has posted 15,000 hands since his return and the encounters have not been short of drama. His journey began pretty well as he took on PokerStars leading money winner for 2012 EireAbu in an 11 hour heads up encounter starting on the 14th August at the $50/$100 and $100/$200 PLO tables where he eventually walked away a $200k winner, although even that match had some fascinating twists and turns (see here for report on that match up).
Blom continued in the same vein through the 15th, crushing at the $200/$400 PLO ring games and at one point approached $500k in winnings. However, a nasty session against Jeans89 yesterday cost him dearly and at one point his winnings at the PLO tables had eroded to close to zero. Once again though Isildur1 was able to dig deep and he put on a good rush towards the end of their encounter and managed to walk away a six figure loser in the match but still up around $300k total for his PLO endeavours. We also saw a rare bit of NL action from Blom as he took on altiFC heads up at $100/$200. After taking around a $125k lead the match evened out towards the end of the c.500 encounter with Blom leaving a $28k winner.
It was from the Jeans89/Isildur1 encounter that the days biggest hands occurred, here are the top three;
All in preflop Blom's high double suited cards are pretty much dead after the flop against Jeans89's AA - $115.5k pot
Jeans89 makes a play on the turn with an open ended straight and flush draw but Isildur1's top two is good for this $100k pot
Isildur1 pretty much knows he'll need some major luck on the river to get this one as he is checked raised all in on the turn. Jeans89 takes this $98k pot
Of course we couldn't end an Isildur1 report with it all being plain sailing as while he was honing his PLO and NLHE skills Blom seemed keen on staying true to his word (he said in his statement after the split with PokerStars was announced that he wanted to "concentrate on poker"), and he obviously had decided he needed to add some more variants of the game he loves to his armoury. Cue some long and costly lessons at the Limit Omaha Hi Lo and 2-7 Triple Draw tables. When most people decide to try a new game the usual route is to drop down in stakes and see the lie of the land. This has never been Blom's style however and he obviously felt that with a few hundred thousand in his back pocket he would like some expensive lessons from the best players in the world at the $1k/$2k stakes.
In total Blom ended up around a $100k loser over the three days of play and certainly paid the price for mixing it with the best in the limit games as he played alongside allcomers including Seb86, joiso, Chung Ho, MrSweets28, madmags4 and many more. In fact, when Blom was playing the tables filled up pretty quickly.
When all is said and done many may criticize Blom for opting to take this route but as many of his contemporaries have noted, when he started playing PLO he was very exploitable and pretty much a high stakes "fish", whereas now his PLO game is respected by many - Blom is willing to learn the hard way and one thing is certain and that is that he is a very quick learner. It may not have been a particularly good year so far for the aggressive Swede in any online cash games (although his tournament results have been great) but given the variance, especially in PLO and Blom's "all or nothing" approach, the results, odd though it may sound, really don't tell the whole story.
When all is said and done Mr Blom certainly knows how to liven up a poker game and his appeal to the online fans is unparalleled - one can only wonder where his talents may take him when he gets a grip on the game and his bankroll management?
In other news it seems that PokerStars really is becoming the high stakes cash game force it was always destined to become, and with the comeback of the likes of Gus "broksi" Hansen (a $200k winner from the past two days) then it was only a matter of time before the nosebleed limit games started again, and they have been running pretty regularly over the past couple of weeks.
Yesterday it was "madmags4" who capitalized on the action, winning $244k playing in the Omaha hi-lo games. madmagz4 played for seven straight hours, logging close to 700 hands and was the main benefactors for Isildur1's action at the FLO8 tables. In the 2-7 games it was another Swede, capoch, who was the big winner as he took $149k in 1500 hands.
Overall Winners For Thursday
madmags4 +$243.8k, capoch +$149k, Seb86 +$138k
For more results check out the high stakes results database