The Return of Isildur1

Little time (or energy) available for posting today, I’m afraid. Too much to do and too little time to do it. It’s not like I have the seemingly limitless stamina of, say, Isildur1, the man who can play nearly 10,000 hands in less than 24 hours at the highest stakes and against the top pros.

I began this week here sharing some of Mike “The Mouth” Matusow’s comments about those super-stacked, “nosebleed” games over on Full Tilt Poker in which Isildur1 has been a primary participant of late. That got me interested in checking out how Isildur1 had been doing over these 6-7 weeks since his return.

Some big, big wins for the mystery Swede in there. And, once again, some devastating losses. Or, I should say, losses that would prove devastating for most of us mortals, but for Isildur1 seem business as usual.

I ended up compiling a summary of Isildur1’s activities since his return in early February. If you’re curious to catch up on the story, you can read that summary over at Betfair here: “The Isildur1 Saga, the Sequel.”

One part of the story I found especially interesting was that huge losing session Isildur1 suffered against Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond. Talk about suspect game selection. Amid his battles with the other top pros -- and during the latter part of that one insane, nearly 10,000-hand session that took place in less than 24 hours -- Isildur1 took on Galfond at the $300/$600 and $500/$1,000 pot-limit Omaha tables, and Galfond took around $1.87 million from the Swede.

Galfond wrote a short blog post about their battle over at his site, Blue Fire Poker, which included links to several hands as well as a couple of very interesting, 7-8 minute videos from the session (with Galfond’s commentary). If you’re interested, check out that post here.

So signing off early today. Hope everyone has a relatively calm, non-swingy weekend. I’m going to try. I think staying away from the $500/$1,000 PLO heads-up tables will help.