The Effect of Isildur1

It now seems to be a universal truth that a surefire way to end a relative drought at the highstakes online games is to inject Vktor "Isildur1" Blom into the action. Once again this week we have seen the hugely positive effect the presence of the Swedish phenom has on the games.

Although the first week and a half of March had been a little better in terms of action than we saw during much of Februrary, the action really picked up towads the end of last week, coinciding precisely with Isildur1's latest assault on PokerStars high stakes tables.

Isildur1's latest mini-upswing started last Thursday after he bagged a $131k win from 8 long hours at the $400/$800 8-game tables where his presence brought out a role call of big guns including Ben "Sauce123" Sulsky, Daniel "w00ki3z." Cates, Rafi "refaelamit" Amit, calvin7v, Timofey "Trueteller" Kuznetsov, Alex "BiatchPeople" Luneau, JohnSmith, Elior "Crazy Elior" Sion, Alexander "joiso" Kostritsyn, Mike "gordo16" Gorodinsky, and Mikael "ChaoRen160" Thuritz.

Blom followed this win up the very next day (Friday) with an even bigger win. He won just short of $200k. The mixed-game tables once again staged most of the action, although by now the stakes had been raised to $1k/$2k. While Isildur1 did win in the 8-Game matches, the majority of his profit came from a heads-up $100/$200 match against fellow Swede BERRI SWEET. The action at the 8-Game tables was dominated by Ben "Sauce123" Sulsky, who posted a $205k win against some of the best in the business.o the $1k/$2k 8-Game mix where he played well over 4,000 hands.

A $40k win on Saturday topped Isildur1's 3 day profit up to $370k and on Monday he brought it all back to the $1k/$2k 8-game tables for a huge session lasting the entire day and night.

The majority of the play was three handed between Trueteller, joiso, and Isildur1 and was dominated by joiso who ended the 18.5 hour session up $3/4m. By this time Isildur1's upswing had been well and truly stopped in its tracks, although he did manage to end the day down $127k after being over a quarter of a million in the hole at one point in proceedings.

There was no sign of things slowing up on Tuesday, with Blom putting in another +3k hand day. Much of Blom's day was spent ahead after a $66k win at the $400/$800 mixed-games, and a $70k heads-up $100/$200 PLO win over BERRI SWEET meaning that he had managed to write off the vast majority of his losses during the very early hours of yesterday in the 8-Game. Alex "joiso" Kostritsyn continued his good form, taking his two day total up to +$840k after more 8-Game success.

Up until this morning, Isildur1 was still up over $175k for the week, meaning that we shoudl yet see some more action in the mixed-games and PLO tables. However, an $85k loss so far today doesn't bode well, and should he lose the remainder of his weekly profits later today then perhaps we can kiss goodbye to the round the clock action we've been treated to over the past week or so.

To give you an idea of Isildur1's impact on play - between 1st - 9th March the combined number of hands played between the top 20 winners was less than 17,000 in total. Since the start of Isildur1's latest upswing through to yesterday (10th - 16th March) we have already seen almost 56,000 hands player by the top 20 winners from that period!

Let's hope another spin up is on its way!