Viktor “Isildur1” Blom is a Swedish high stakes pro who captivated the poker world long before his true identity was revealed. In fact, he was only known as Isildur1 from 2009 to the beginning of 2011, which gave Blom the allure of having a secret identity. Guesses on his real identity ranged from fellow Swede Robert Flink to 11-time WSOP bracelet winner Phil Helmuth - although most people still suspected it was Blom.
Regardless of everything though, we can confidently state that Isildur1 was the best thing that happened to online poker in 2009. Bursting onto the nosebleed stakes scene in November, Isildur1 caught the majority of Full Tilt’s high stakes regulars off-guard. He took on Tom Dwan several times and fleeced him pretty well every time. By the end of the slaughter that the Dwan v Isildur1 series of heads up matches had become, the mystery Swede was up more than $4 million on the New Jersey Wonderkid. He did manage to take some dough off Ivey too, but he didn’t fare so well against Patrik Antonius, who kept using him as an ATM.
Eventually, Isildur1’s spectacular run came to an end at the hands of Cadrunners professional Brian Hastings, to whom the Swede dropped $4.20 million over a single session, thus breaking all records for single-session swings. During his run, Isildur1 contributed to the fall of several other records as well.
The incident raised quite a few eyebrows when Hastings admitted afterwards that he had made use of hand histories and analysis acquired and performed by his fellow Cardrunners professional, Brian Townsend. Having been felted at Full Tilt, Isildur1 rebuilt his bankroll at other sites, and returned with a vengeance to Full Tilt’s nosebleed tables in 2010. Unfortunately, Blom wasn’t able to dominate the regulars like he once did; however, better things were still ahead for the Swede.
At the start of 2011, speculation was running rampant that Isildur1’s identity would finally be revealed. This all came to fruition on January 8th, 2011 at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure when the previously unknown Isildur1 was set to take on Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier in $25/$50 NLHE with $10,000 starting stacks. After the mystery opponent was revealed to be Blom, the two upped the stakes of their heads-up match to $50/$100, and the Swede defeated Grospellier in a 100-hand game.
Aside from the entertaining heads-up match, PokerStars also announced that Blom would become the newest addition to Team PokerStars. Since this time, the site has promoted Isildur1 in the PokerStars SuperStar Showdown, which sees him take on challengers in heads-up matches. Most of the games involve multi-tabling four tables of $50/$100 NLHE, and the winner is the player who’s ahead after 2,500 hands. Some of the players who Blom has taken on include Dan “Jungleman12” Cates, Daniel “KidPoker” Negreanu, Isaac “philivey2694” Haxton, Tony G, Eugene Katchalov and Scott “urnotindangr” Palmer.