New Faces on the Internet Poker Wall of Fame

8 years ago
New Players on the Internet Poker Wall of Fame
17:28
02 Mar

The Poker Hall of Fame is a well-known ‘club’, which this year invited Jennifer Harman and John Juanda into its hallowed ranks, and whose membership includes ‘poker's most influential players and other important contributors to the game’.

Not so well-known, however, is the Internet Poker Wall of Fame (IPWOF), started last year by the TwoPlusTwo pokercast duo of Adam Schwartz and Terrence Chan. This week they added three more internet sensations to ‘the wall’: Guy Laliberte,Taylor Caby, and Viktor ‘Isildur1’ Blom.

Technically speaking, the only requirement for induction is that "the person must have played at least one hand of poker on the Internet," according to Schwartz on the TwoplusTwo forum thread where inductees are announced. All three new inductees certainly meet that criteria without a problem, although last month’s induction of Neteller seems to suggest that even that minor requirement can be overlooked.


The Internet Poker Wall of Fame was started after what was termed in the opening post of the thread as "years of whining about the Poker Hall of Fame and the politics surrounding it.” The Poker Hall of Fame itself was established in 1979, and acquired by Caesars Entertainment along with the World Series of Poker in 2004, and now boasts 50 members, half of whom are deceased.

Caby, Laliberte, and Blom become the 15th, 16th, and 17th members of the internet version, following PartyPokerco-founder Vikrant Bhargava, poker author and TwoPlusTwo-owner Mason Malmuth, and high-stakes expert Patrik Antonius, who were all inducted at the beginning of this month.


Viktor ‘Isildur1’ Blom

Of the new inductees, Viktor ‘Isildur1’ Blom is the most-famous. At one time, his anonymity online being the most-talked about poker secret. His identity was revealed back in January of 2011, when the Pokernews.com report at the time describing it thus:

During dinner break of Day 1a at the 2011 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event, a table was set up in the middle of the room for a special heads-up match between the player revealed as Isildur1 and one other. Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier.

The legend, who had taken millions from the online nose-bleed stake tables, was unveiled – and the only surprise is that he wasn’t first – or among the first - players to be inducted by Schwartz and Chan.


Guy Laliberte

Guy Laliberte is better known among non-poker circles for being the co-founder of Cirque du Soleil, and for his entrepreneurial and philanthropic work – as well as becoming the first Canadian space tourist in 2009.

On the poker scene he has excelled as well, winning more than $2.5 million on the tournament circuit, remarkably the result of just two events – a 5th place at the $1million Big One for One Drop at the 2012 WSOP accounting for $1.8 million or so, and a 4th spot at the WPT $25K buy-in Five Star World Poker Classic providing the remaining $696,220.

His online exploits, however, have been much-less fruitful. According to James Gill writing back in 2013 for Pokerlistings.com:

His legacy in poker might very well become the charitable Big One for One Drop event at the World Series of Poker. But he made his name in the poker community with some epic sessions of online charity that fueled the careers of some of poker's most famous stars.”

These ‘sessions of online charity’ amounted to the tune of $26million according to Schwartz. He shortly left the online game, "Presumably…embarrassed to have his results under so much public scrutiny," says Schwartz, after his results were published on an online poker-tracking site.


Taylor Caby

The third inductee this week, Taylor Caby, will not be so well-known to those who only follow tournament poker, but for online buffs he is a legend. He turned an initial deposit of $35 on the old Ultimate Bet site into a 7-figure sum back in the early nineties.

This remarkable rise to online fame and fortune afforded him the opportunity to indulge his entrepreneurial side, co-founding the poker training site CardRunners, which was eventually integrated into the Full Tilt site. He then followed this up by buying out Hold’em Manager, one of the world’s leading poker tracking software companies.

The documentary BET RAISE FOLD: The Story of Online Poker, the first feature-length documentary film about the online poker boom, saw Caby team up with freelance filmmaker Ryan Firpo and screenwriter, producer, and fellow former high-stakes online poker pro Jason ‘Jay’ Rosenkrantz.

Whoever will be next in line for the Internet Poker Wall of Fame induction remains to be seen, but as the founding fathers of the awards intended, it makes a pleasant and interesting change from the annual slugfest which surrounds the more famous version!


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Andrew from Edinburgh, Scotland, is a professional journalist, international-titled chess master, and avid poker player.Read more

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