Isildur1's Busy Wednesday

2017 was the year the online poker community saw the return of a true legend: Isildur1 got back into action at the highest stakes on PokerStars and PartyPoker - last Wednesday was another eventful day for the Swedish cardplayer, with highs and lows.

Viktor “Isildur1” Blom made a name for himself in the world of online poker in the late 2000s. His identity unknown at the time, the mysterious player from Sweden gave us two of the most well known matches in poker history: first, he beat Tom “durrrr” Dwan out of $5 million playing heads-up NLHE on Full Tilt; then he had a $4.1 million losing PLO session against "Stinger88" Hastings, also heads-up. Whether Hastings’ victory should be considered fair or not is still debated, considering he had received Isildur1’s hand histories even from games he had not played against him - they were given to him by fellow online high stakes players.

Since his bust against Hastings, although Isildur1 did not disappear completely, he definitely ceased to be the feared killer online he used to be. But that may have changed this year.

He showed up at the super high stakes online mixed cash game tables again, playing at stakes as high as $1K/$2K against players like the German “RaulGonzales” or the Russian Timofey “Trueteller” Kuznetsov. He went on another giant upswing - in fact his PokerStars cash game chart hit an all time high at $3.26 million in profit in July this year!

Later he also played in Sam Trickett’s $100/$200 PLO cash game on PartyPoker while multi-tabling at a WCOOP final table on Stars. Also, Isildur1’s name has been reappearing among the biggest winners on HighstakesDB. For example, in June he was the most profitable player by far across all sites and game types, winning over $1.1 million in a single month.

He played some big sessions last week too: he started his Wednesday off with a $1K/$2K 2-7 triple draw heads-up match against “donthnrmepls”, a high stakes player from Germany on PokerStars. The first session ended after just 37 hands, with donthnrmepls being up $53K. Their next duel of the day was even shorter, Blom losing over $30K that time over the course of only 19 hands. He got back at the table after a half hour break and the two stayed for almost 90 minutes for their last session - part way through it seemed Isildur was back on the right track, winning back $72,000 of the $84,000 he had lost, but ultimately the high stakes triple draw match-up ended with donthnrmepls $105K in the green.

Isildur1 decided to move on to PartyPoker trying to recoup, and he managed to do so. First off, he finished 10th in the MILLIONS Online Event, cashing for $59,052. And the day wasn’t over for him just yet: he took on the Czech casino owner, "KingsOfLeon" Tsoukernik at a $100/$200 Pot-limit Omaha heads-up table. Isildur must have known that it can be quite profitable to play PLO against Tsoukernik, since he was at the table with him during PartyPoker’s last high stakes full ring PLO cash game back in September where Tsoukernik seemed a little too willing to give away his stack, having to reload multiple times during the session.

Although their recent game started with Isildur losing his first $40K buy-in to Tsoukernik, the rest of the match went just as he had hoped it would. The Swede managed to win a few giant pots, the biggest one of them being $242,000. Overall he ended the session with a $200K profit - add that to the $59K he won in the MILLIONS, and Isildur ended his day on party with $260 plus, making back more than twofold what he had lost on Stars.