2005: The Young Swedish Prodigy
Like most people who become great at their craft, Blom started his training a little earlier than most. At only 14 years old the youngster had regular live games going with his friends, having been taught the basics by his older brother. In breaks between lessons at school, he and his friends played games with a $3-$7 buy in, and the young Viktor Blom soon began to outshine his classmates. Upon turning 15, the two Blom brothers decided to deposit some money into an online account, and sitting down at their first MTT, they immediately caught a break, finishing 5th place for $300. After discovering the game together, the Blom brothers then created separate accounts and took different paths, with Viktor choosing his first screen name of ‘blom90.’
September 16, 2009: The Emergence of ‘Isildur1’ on Full Tilt Poker
When the unknown screen name ‘Isildur1‘ appeared at the high stakes tables, there must have been many top pros licking their lips in the hope that this would be a rich amateur ready to throw some cash around, but they were about to find out the hard way that this was something quite different. Having first been sighted on FullTilt Poker in September 2009, the young Swede only truly arrived in November, when he sat at half a dozen $300/$600 NLH tables and waited for action. That action quickly arrived in the form of online sensation, Tom ‘Durrrr’ Dwan. The two incredibly talented young men traded huge pots back and forth over lengthy sessions, and after 4 days, Isildur1 had made a serious statement to the online poker world, having inflicted a heavy $3 million loss on Dwan. By the middle of November, he had racked up $6 million profits in online cash games, facing off against players like Phil Ivey, Patrick Antonius, Cole South, and Brian Townsend, at stakes as high as $500/$1000.
November 21, 2009: The Biggest Pot in Online Poker History
By the time late November arrived, the entire poker world had sat up and taken notice of an anonymous new hero called Isildur1 and marvelled at his ruthless dismantling of top pros. On November 21st while playing a PLO session against Patrick Antonius, the fearless Isildur1 got his stack in on the flop with a wrap around straight draw, creating the largest pot in online poker history. One hand of poker with $1,356,947 in the middle, and fortunately for Antonius, his flopped Straight held up.
December 8, 2009: The Assassination of ‘Isildur1’
On December 8th, three established pros, clearly tired of being elbowed aside by the rising star of Isildur1, took a decision which changed everything. They decided to conspire with each other, in order to take him down. With none of them seemingly able to fight him head to head and win, they all brought their carefully collected hand history data together to form a much larger pool of data, and dedicated their time to dissecting everything he did. By the time Brian Hastings sat down to play a session against Isildur1, he and his team had come up with a detailed plan to combat the aggressive Swede. This was not the man to man sword fighting duel that heads up poker had always been, this was the ugly face of envy, a mob without honour, dragging a gifted man to the floor and knifing him to death. Julius Caesar once spoke of the dice already being in the air, shortly before walking into the ambush that killed him. This time the cards were in the air, and Isildur1’s number was up. Brian Hastings later wrote a blog post boasting of winning over $4 million on that day, and while FullTilt stripped Hastings of his red pro status for actions which most considered deeply immoral, he hadn’t crossed into the illegal, and so no further action was taken. Sightings of Isildur1 were rare over the next year.
December 10, 2010 – The Return and Unmasking of ‘Isildur1’
While a few rumours of his identity had begun to circulate, it wasn’t until he joined team PokerStars in December that his identity was officially revealed, during the PCA series in January. During dinner break, Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier took a seat at a heads up table while a large crowd gathered. He was of course scheduled to play Isildur1 in a live match, and as the youthful looking 20 year old stepped out from behind a curtain, the crowd applauded the unveiling of Viktor Blom, the man behind the feared name of Isildur1. After changing the face of online poker in 2009, Blom finally accepted the adulation that came with it.
Isildur1 identity has been officially revealed only in 2010
May 28, 2013 – SCOOP Main Event High
Once he had resurfaced, it always seemed likely that Blom would either be back beating the cash games or win something remarkable sooner or later. In the end, it was the SCOOP series of 2013 that provided the moment of magic. The high buy in Main Event attracted 580 runners, including some of the greatest online players ever to have clicked a mouse. With a $10,300 buy in, a $5.8 million prize pool was created, and as it got down to the final table, one player was stealing the show and amassing chips quickly. He never slowed up, destroying the final table and taking home $1,096,200 for 1st place. That player was none other than Viktor Blom.
August 2015 – Crushing Cash Once More
After disappearing for a time, Blom had returned, rebuilt, completed a headline grabbing SCOOP Main Event win, and was back at the cash tables. If August 25th 2015 showed us anything, it is that you can take $4 million from someone’s bankroll, but you can never take away the qualities that led to them having a bankroll that size in the first place. Some things are temporary, skill is not. On August 25th Blom enjoyed a huge winning day at the tables, banking $1 million. He is currently one of the biggest online winners of 2015. It’s difficult to know whether his bankroll has recovered to what it was in 2009 but one thing is for sure – Isildur1 is back at the top where he belongs, and the poker world is a better place for his being there.
Article by Craig B.
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Louis Hartwell
Graduated in Media Communication at the University of Lausanne, Louis Hartman is a co-founder of somuchpoker.com. He began his career in Cambodia as freelance journalist. In same time he was making his living by playing poker every night at that time. Intense learner, he read dozens of poker strategy books to improve his skills during many years. With a strong interest about poker "behind the scene" in Asia and his communication skills, Louis launched Somuchpoker in 2014.
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