Erik the Viking – Return of The King!

(Photo: WSOP.com)

The name rang a bell, but I couldn’t quite place it - Erik Sagström – but where did I know it from? It soon came back to me when the article mentioned high-stakes poker from before the time my own interest in the game started with Viktor ‘Isildur1’ Blom and his anonymous decimation of the world’s elite.

Sweden’s ‘Erik 123’ was a baby-faced online assassin, playing under various other names across a range of sites before Full Tilt and PokerStars dominated the nosebleed stakes – and the tales of his wins was a match for anything the ‘durrrr’s, Ivey’s and Hansen’s’ of the poker world achieved.

And although he has never really been completely away from the tables, Erik ‘the Viking’ Sagström seems to have found a new lease of life, bringing poker once again to the forefront of his self-admitted degen gambling lifestyle.

No longer the fresh-faced youngster of his online heyday - where rumors of $10million wins may only be slightly exaggerated - Sagström has been mixing it with the other high-rollers in Bobby’s Room at the Bellagio, venue for The Big Game which has seen a who’s-who of the poker game win and lose millions over the years.

As with any living legend who drops off the face of the planet, people are prone to question where they’ve disappeared to. BluffEurope back in 2013 did exactly that, describing his rise-to-fame where:

"He terrorized the high stakes tables between 2004 and 2007 at a time when Prahlad “Spirit Rock” Friedman and Johnny “bad_ip” Lodden ruled the nosebleeds. He also was part owner, with Gus Hansen and Tony G, of the PokerChamps online poker room, which was sold to Befair in 2005 for €18m.”

They added a bit more:

"Erik had everything, riches, fame, even his own poker room, Erik123.com, which launched in 2007. And then he just… fizzled out. A high-stakes player known as DIN_FRU (Swedish translation: “Your Wife”) who was playing on Full Tilt until around 2010 was thought to be Erik, yet it was never confirmed. Word is that he lives in a mansion somewhere in Sweden and does sports betting. We’d like to imagine him as some kind of Howard Hughes figure with crazy long fingernails and a big beard conducting his sports betting operations in front of hundreds of monitors. Erik, son, if you’re reading this, get in touch. We’re worried about you.”

The sports-betting part was true enough, Erik finding a new lease of life in the world of NFL, where he used his powers of analysis and love of stats to become hugely successful in his new sphere. But the poker had never truly disappeared from his life.

"I'm playing a lot of poker tournaments all over the U.S. actually,” he told WSOP.com shortly after taking down the $5,200 High Roller event at the WSOP Circuit tournament in Vegas’ Planet Hollywood this month, a victory worth $65,000 – pocket change to Erik, but a sign that his game is still there and then some. He added:

"I played at the Bike a few days ago and then I played here. I'm going to travel and I'm going to play a lot of poker tournaments. I'll be around."

Before that he had made an appearance in the $50K Players Championship at this year’s WSOP proper, insisting:

"I wasn't planning on playing much, but once you're here, you get sucked in. Life is crazy, and the degenerate that I am, I play all the time now."

And so you just never know where and when you might bump into one of the game’s legends – and Erik Sagström is definitely one of those, even if it took me a while to remember it!!