The Battle of Hastings

This past Sunday, poker pro Brian Hastings jumped on Twitter to allege an instance of angle shooting perpetrated by an opponent of his during a World Series of Poker event. Hastings has won two WSOP events this summer, and this incident occured at the final table of one of them, the $1,500 10-game mix.

“PSA,” tweeted Hastings. “Alexey Makarov aka Lucky Gump (I think) tried to angle shoot at 10 game FT. Floor ruled against him tho. Beware.”

Several sprang to Makarov’s defense as Hastings described a hand in which Makarov had asked for a misdeal following the awkward delivery of the first three cards in stud. Hastings believed Makarov only made the request after seeing everyone’s upcards, including the deuce Makarov had been dealt.

Before long Hastings was reporting that he “may have overreacted” and that “Alexey and I made up and are friends again.” In other words, it appeared a very minor episode and if it weren’t the WSOP where every little dust-up gets extra scrutiny, few would have noticed it.

Discussion about it, though, prompted David “Bakes” Baker -- one of those who has brought to the fore game integrity issues with the Modiano cards being used at the WSOP -- to complain that Hastings himself had been involved in some shenanigans during the weeks leading up to the series, having played high-stakes mixed games (including SCOOP events) on PokerStars under another person’s account.

“So after I FT’d the SCOOP 2k a bunch of well known pros messaged me telling me @brianchastings was behind the NoelHayes account on Stars,” tweeted Baker.

Hastings normally plays as “$tinger 88” on PokerStars, and indeed, a player registered in Ireland named “NoelHayes” had made one of the $2,100 NLHE final tables during SCOOP, finishing fourth and in fact knocking out Baker (a.k.a. “WhooooKidd”) in fifth.

Playing on a second account is of course against Stars’ Terms of Service which explicitly limits players to just one. “In the event that PokerStars becomes aware of additional accounts opened by a User,” says the applicable item in the TOC, “PokerStars may close such additional accounts without notice and may confiscate funds held in such additional accounts.”

Much noise ensued over Twitter as well as on Two Plus Two where a thread to discuss Baker’s allegation was swiftly begun. As some in the thread have noted, the story evokes a much older one involving Hastings and his huge $4.2 million winning session versus Viktor Blom on Full Tilt Poker in December 2009.

Blom -- that is, “Isildur1” (whose identity was unknown at the time) -- lost those millions versus Hastings, then the latter revealed in an interview how he had been supplied hand histories involving Blom compiled by his then CardRunners pro colleagues (something that also skirted close to crossing a line in FTP’s terms, although the site determined Hastings was not guilty of any violations). Here’s a post from then introducing that controversy, if you’re curious.

The 2+2 thread raged onward for a couple of days and more than 240 posts. One side issue brought up by some concerns the highly-publicized bracelet bets Hastings made prior to the start of the WSOP and the idea that some making those bets didn’t realize he’d been playing high-stakes mixed games online during the spring.

Early this morning -- just before 5 a.m. Vegas time -- Hastings chimed in with a fuel-on-the-fire contribution to the thread in which he pointedly avoids addressing the whole “NoelHayes” question.

After making clear “I have nothing to add to the conversation publicly” and dismissing “what strangers on the internet” have to say about him, Hastings laments “something like this being a major story in the poker world at a time in which the WSOP is in full force and we should be trying to promote and grow the game of poker, rather than drag it through the mud.”

He brings up the state of online poker in the U.S. and efforts to bring the game back, calling it “unfortunate that certain people have been on bad runs and choose to take their frustrations out outwardly” -- i.e., by criticizing his apparent multi-accounting. He adds “this will be my last post in this thread,” although he already has come back a couple of times to further the theme that efforts to uncover his misdeeds are hurtful to the game as a whole.

Needless to say, such a post was not received well at 2+2. Indeed it makes little sense as an argument, which for me comes off like Nixon in his 1974 State of the Union stressing the need to put an end to the Watergate investigations (“One year of Watergate is enough”) in order to allow the the nation and its government to start “devoting our full energies” to other important issues.

Certainly yet another story of high-stakes multi-accounting reflects somewhat badly on the game, but not acknowledging it or considering it worth looking into would obviously be much worse for poker. Compare the cheating allegation in the $10K Heads-Up event a few weeks ago (still apparently being investigated). Sure, even an accusation reflects badly on the game in general and the WSOP in particular, but the damage caused by a reputation hit hardly compares to harm caused by actual cheating.

Hard to tell, to be honest, amid all the back-and-forthing what exactly to think about what has been alleged, including whether or not some “may have overreacted” here as Hastings might have done with Makarov. Even so, it will be curious to follow where this battle proceeds next.

(EDIT [added 6/25/15, 6 p.m.]: The thread and story takes another turn, with Baker sharing a direct message from Hastings in which the latter admits to having played on Stars on the “NoelHayes” account [which some have pointed out would have to have been done from the U.S. via VPN, another big no-no]. If curious, click here.)

The Professionals Leave the Table

Today Full Tilt Poker announced they aren’t renewing sponsorship contracts with Viktor “Isildur1” Blom and Gus Hansen, thereby jettisoning the last two sponsored pros from the site. Also gone (apparently) is the name originally given to the site’s “power trio” of sponsored pros -- Blom, Hansen, and Tom Dwan -- shortly after the launch of FTP 2.0 in November 2012: “The Professionals.”

Dwan left the band in December 2013. I wrote here then how the occasion inspired “thoughts of how the whole idea of poker celebs -- that different class of poker ‘professionals’ -- once such a very effective construct of online sites and abetted ably by the TV shows the sites sponsored, seems like something from an earlier era.”

Today’s news moves the needle even less. Hansen has long remained a figure of interest to many thanks to his win in the very first televised World Poker Tour event way back in 2002, his high-level involvement with FTP as a member of Team Full Tilt, and his continued participation in the “nosebleed” stakes games on the site where he’s reportedly lost over $20 million, including more than $17 million on the site during the last two years (according to High Stakes DB).

Blom, too, has fascinated many ever since the mysterious “Isildur1” showed up to challenge all of those Team Full Tilters and the rest of the world in late 2009. I’ve written here many times about Blom, including how intriguing it was to report on him at the WSOP. High Stakes DB shows Blom sitting around break-even during his almost two years playing on FTP 2.0, having been up nearly $6 million during the first six or seven months before falling back down to where he was on the site back in November 2012 (down a few milly).

The last post I wrote here about Hansen was in January 2013 when just a couple of months after FTP 2.0 went live he fired off some tone-deaf tweets in defense of Howard Lederer that were dismissive of just about the entire online poker community. The title of that post, “Ungrateful Gus; or, Hansen on High,” suggests how his thoughts were received here. The last one I wrote about Blom was right about the same time, the title of which was a response to enthusiastic tweets from the FTP account reporting his presence at the high-stakes tables on the site: “Blasé About Blom.” Again, the title is an indicator of the attitude expressed in the post.

Today the dissolution of “The Professionals” altogether brings a different thought to mind about the significance of sponsored pros to online sites. I actually think they can serve a great purpose, even today, not just in helping attract players and building sites’ presence, but in helping to advocate for poker, generally speaking. The Team PokerStars Pros are an obviously well managed example of this, with players all over the world doing a lot to help explain and promote poker to wider audiences in their respective countries.

I’m realizing today, though, that FTP’s “Professionals” idea -- a dim echo of Team Full Tilt from the start -- had very little to do with establishing and strengthening connections among members of an online poker community. Rather, its whole ethos was to emphasize the impassable distance between Hansen, Blom, and Dwan and the unwashed masses.

The spectacle of watching “The Professionals” play for high stakes was mildly diverting for some, but hardly inspiring for most, particularly given the seeming apathy -- or even antipathy (in Hansen’s case) -- they appeared to have for the poker community as a whole.

In fact, the news of the end of the “The Professionals” makes me think of what a table full of amateurs might say to each other after a pro player finally gets up to leave after having made things difficult for them for the previous several hours.

“Glad he’s gone.”

Blasé About Blom

Had one eye on that PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event playing out to its conclusion this weekend, with Dimitar Danchev of Bulgaria ultimately triumphing to land the $1.859 million first prize. I’ll admit, though, to having been more distracted by the divisional round of the NFL playoffs. Three of the four games were above-average entertaining, and even the fourth (between New England and Houston) had enough drama attached to it to keep the majority of my attention.

It’s become something of a habit for me when watching sports to keep Tweetdeck open on my laptop and follow folks’ comments as the game goes by. Both poker and football work well for that sort of thing, actually, as the pause between hands/plays allows people enough time to compose and fire off reactions to what is happening. Was suggesting on Friday how Twitter isn’t so great for more involved carving out of positions and argumentation, but I do like sometimes to learn others’ immediate response to a live event we’re all watching together.

From @hardboiledpoker I follow both poker people and sports fans, and thus there was a lot of talk in my feed regarding both the PCA and the football games intertwining throughout the weekend. (I’d sign off just as the Golden Globes got going in earnest later on Sunday, thereby taking over Twitter.) Amid those conversations, though, I kept seeing the @BluffEurope feed butting in with references to an article about Viktor “Isildur1” Blom.

The tweets had begun on Saturday and continued into Sunday. After a while, I had to check back to confirm that I wasn’t just imagining seeing the same tweet over and again.

I suppose, technically, it wasn’t exactly the same:

I finally had to poke fun with a responding tweet of my own. “Hey, @BluffEurope,” I began. “Has Blom’s 2013 start been phenomenal, amazing, or fantastic?”

The short article -- yes, I finally did succumb to the unsubtle strategy being employed and clicked through to read -- noted how Blom was up $4.6 million so far in 2013 on Full Tilt Poker, and more than $5 million overall since the FTP relaunch in early November. For a more thorough report on Blom’s success, I then tripped over to the High Stakes Database website and read all about it, including how Blom recently took more than $600K off of Ben “Sauce1234” Sulsky in a three-hour session.

It was almost exactly a year ago that Blom -- then a PokerStars Team Pro -- achieved his first major live score at the PCA by winning the $100K Super High Roller and earning a $1,254,400 million payday. But this time around the games on FTP were too good for Blom to be bothered by a return to the Bahamas. Responding last week via his @RealIsildur1 Twitter account to someone asking about how he was doing at this year’s PCA, Blom explained “I don't participate in this years PCA. I have already made over 3 times as much money as I made last year playing in PCA.”

When I think about Blom’s phenomenalamazingfantastic run, I can’t help but follow a certain, cynical chain of associative thought.

I think about how Gus Hansen’s start on Full Tilt Poker 2.0 has also been remarkable, although there the story concerns how big he has been losing -- more than $3.5 million on the site since early November.

I also think about Blom’s sudden rise and precipitous fall on Full Tilt Poker back when we first started hearing about him in late 2009. Remember that swift saga that ended with Blom losing $4 million-plus to Brian Hastings, then talking about filing a formal complaint regarding allegations of of data mining? (Blom never did file such a complaint.)

Finally, even though I trust the new PokerStars-managed FTP to be above board, I can’t help but think about how those millions passed back and forth on the previous iteration of the site were in many ways bogus, and indeed during the latter stages of the site could have been said to represent non-existent funds.

I can’t put my finger on exactly how it all adds up, but there’s something about the combination of Hansen’s slide, the Blom-FTP backstory, and the formerly fraudulent machinations of the old Full Tilt that significantly mutes my response to Blom’s fast start as a newly-sponsored FTP pro. I don’t mean at all to suggest anything untoward, but am rather just pointing out that it’s hard for me to respond to the swingy Swede’s current adventures with anything close to the same sort of astonishment as I did three years ago.

There was another tweet in my feed last week that came from the @FullTiltPoker account, sent the same day as Blom’s response regarding his non-participation in this year’s PCA.

My first instinct was to think the tweet might have been a joke, but it fact it was not. I took a look, confirming that Blom really was playing at a table named “Yawn.” And then I yawned and logged off.

No, after what has happened over the last few years, it’s harder than ever to get too excited about Viktor earning the spoils. Heck, this morning I am seeing yet another report that Blom apparently managed to drop a milly to Phil Galfond yesterday. Ho hum.

On the other hand, that Baltimore-Denver double-overtime game Saturday night... now that was phenomenal. And amazing. And fantastic. (Unless you’re a Broncos fan, that is.)

Eve of Reconstruction

I’m only home for a short stretch here between these two trips to Atlantic City (just completed) and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (where I head tomorrow). Have been busy enough not to have had time to pay all that much attention to various poker-related headlines over the last few days.

Skimming around this morning, I see Full Tilt Poker’s FTOPS XXI has been playing out over the last week-and-a-half, with a lot of familiar names among those winning or going deep in events thus far, including Dani Stern, Taylor Paur, Bill Gazes, Dylan Lynde, Luke Schwartz, Keven Stammen, and others.

Kind of interesting how in the reports one sees many players being identified by their real names, the identification of their online nicks now common knowledge. And what’s happening is a lot of those who made their “names” on FTP prior to Black Friday have come back to the site to find success again.

Speaking of FTP, there was also a big heads-up match between their pros Viktor Blom and Tom Dwan over the weekend, kind of patterned after the “All-Star Showdown” matches recently staged on PokerStars. Apparently Blom and Dwan were together down $3.3 million or so after one month of play on Full Tilt Poker 2.0., making the $100K that “Isildur1” won off of “durrrr” this weekend seem less notable by comparison.

Sort of weird to be reading about these things going on over at Full Tilt Poker, all of which perhaps give the impression that nothing strange at all happened with the site over the last couple of years.

When in AC these last few days, I overheard multiple conversations between U.S.-based players regarding their current, uncertain online poker careers. Players spoke about having buddies in Toronto with an extra room, and how they’d escape up there for a weekend or more to try to grind Sunday tourneys or just put in some hands. And how difficult it was to play well or consistently under such circumstances.

It reminded me a little of the other table talk I’d heard (when playing) about post-Sandy reconstruction and the various hardships people were having to endure. You know, like Black Friday had swept through online poker and wiped out everything, and now players were having to make do with less than ideal arrangements until things could be fixed.

It does sound like “repairs” (so to speak) to online poker in the U.S. are proceeding in some fashion, with next year seeming like a possible target for the return of games via Nevada licenses, other states’ offerings, or perhaps even (still) that federal online poker bill that keeps getting alluded to here and there as a faint possibility.

A little hard to imagine right now, but if it does happen and games for Americans resume at some point in the not-too-distant future, I suppose this little “interregnum” when online poker went dark in the U.S. might actually fade from people’s memories. Especially if PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker are allowed back in the States to rule online poker once again, thus making the post-BF environment resemble the pre-BF one even more.

We’ll then enter into what might be called a “reconstruction” era for online poker in the U.S., during which the forward-thinkers and those who are positioning themselves right now to be ready to act in the new market will benefit greatly.

Are we on the eve of such a return? Could be. Then again, I’m sitting here just contemplatin’... I can’t twist the truth, it knows no regulation... Handful of senators don’t pass legislation....

Linking Out

For today’s post I thought I’d compile a few interesting poker-related reads (and one listen) from the last few days.

First off, Grange95 wrote an excellent post following last week’s ruling by a federal district court judge that poker was a game “predominated by skill rather than chance” and thus not in the judge’s view to be regarded as gambling as defined by the Illegal Gambling Business Act (IGBA)

Grange95’s post takes the form of outlining various consequences of the ruling, along the way summarizing its more salient points in a manner we non-lawyer types can follow. His conclusion? It is indeed a landmark ruling, and one that will play a role in future chapters of the “luck-vs.-skill” debate. However, its scope is limited and there still exist federal and state laws other than the IGBA with which poker’s proponents will have to contend.

Check out “United States v. Dicristina -- A Win for Poker Players (with an Asterisk)” for more.

The Forbes site provided yet another interesting poker-related piece yesterday, a feature describing the high-dollar home game (of sorts) hosted by the much-heralded, highly influential investor Warren Buffet.

In “Inside Warren Buffet’s Private Poker Game,” Randall Lane describes what is in fact an annual tournament hosted by Buffet in which a select group competes for a prize pool worth half a million dollars. Lane himself played in the tournament this past June along with a few high-profile folks, some of whom were bounties in the tourney.

The article mostly focuses on Lane’s own performance (he went out early), and in fact it sounds like Buffet isn’t really much of a poker aficionado (he’s more into bridge). Still, kind of an interesting look at poker being played by a different cast of characters than the ones we usually follow.

Jesse May (Shut Up and Deal) returns this week with another episode of his podcast, “The Poker Show.” It’s been about six weeks since May’s last show back in early July (near the end of the WSOP), making the appearance of a new one notable.

In episode 39 (dated August 27), May talks to a couple of hot German players, “Mad Marvin” Rettenmaier and Dominik Nitsche. Rettenmaier, of course, just comes off an unprecedented feat on the World Poker Tour, having won the last two main events at the Bellagio (the $25K World Championship that ended Season X) and in Cyprus (the kickoff to Season XI). Nitsche, meanwhile, is also having a good year, including winning a bracelet in Event No. 59 at the WSOP, a $1,000 no-limit hold’em event that I happened to help cover.

Both are interesting characters besides being great players, and of course May is always good with the questions, so if poker podcasts are your thing, the show is worth a listen. (EDIT [added 6/10/14]: Sorry, had to remove the link to the show per a request from bwinparty.)

Finally, I’ve recommended posts before by Phil Galfond on his personal blog, and he’s come up with another very good one that should probably interest anyone reading this blog. This time Galfond has written a thoughtful evaluation of one of his most celebrated opponents in the high-stakes online games, Viktor “Isildur1” Blom.

I had a chance this past summer to watch Blom play for most of Day 2 of the World Series of Poker Main Event, reporting on a number of his hands for PokerNews while gathering some thoughts of what it was like to watch the online superstar play live. I shared those impressions here in a post called “Blogging Blom,” although obviously what I saw and related was very limited, the imperfect impressions of an amateur watching the action from a few feet away.

In “Viktor Blom: The Man, The Myth, The Legend,” Galfond provides a more intimate look at both Blom the player and Blom the person. He assesses Blom’s talent (considerable, though with certain flaws), his character and personality (charming, fun-loving), and his prospects going forward (promising, though uncertain). Check it out.

2012 WSOP, Day 46: Blogging Blom

Yesterday I’d guessed the 2,300 players taking seats for Day 2c of the 2012 World Series of Poker Main Event would probably play down to about 900 during the five two-hour levels. As it happened, that’s just about how it went, with 911 still having chips by day’s end.

That group will join those who survived Tuesday’s Day 2a/2b for today’s Day 3. I believe the total number of players left is 1,765 (out of the 6,598 who started).

One player who didn’t survive Day 2c was Viktor “Isildur1” Blom. He began the day with a healthy stack of 110,225, well above the average and one of only about 100 or so players who had more than 100,000 to start yesterday. The swingy Swede saw his stack go up and down all day, peaking at around 200,000 before he finally busted during the last half-hour of the night.

This year marked Blom’s first World Series of Poker, as he only turned 21 last September. I’m not sure how many events Blom played overall this summer. I know he cashed in a couple including finishing 14th in Event No. 45, the $50,000 Poker Players Championship. But I hadn’t really had the chance to cover him yet since I arrived a little over three weeks ago.

As it happened, Blom was seated in my section yesterday and thus I was able to watch him frequently and report on a number of hands he played. I decided early on I’d try to get over to his table at least once or twice per level, primarily because he’s a player a lot of visitors to the live blog would want to follow, although I was also kind of personally intrigued to watch him live after so many years of watching him play online.

The situation reminded me of a couple of years ago when I first had a chance to watch Annette Obrestad play at the WSOP, then wrote a post here titled “Observing Obrestad.” (I haven’t seen Obrestad this summer, although I know she played events early on and cashed in a couple.)

When Blom finally busted it came near the end of the night amid the frenzy of finding big stacks, and we didn’t see the actual bustout hand. I was also writing the final recap post at the time, and so even though I knew he was short on chips and in danger of busting, I couldn’t camp out near his table as the night wound down.

I had kind of felt all day there was a possibility pretty much at any moment that he might get eliminated, given how active he was and how willing he often seemed to put his chips at risk. In other words, I knew there was a good chance he would get knocked out during a time when we were not standing nearby. But I was able to get the story of his bustout hand from another player once play concluded for the night, and so reported it.

It was funny to hear the player refer complainingly to Blom opening the hand with a raise. “He was always raising,” said the player with a note of exasperation, and I nodded knowingly. Every time I passed Blom’s table he was involved in hands, it seemed. While I can only really guess, I’d bet his “VP$IP” was somewhere around a third of the hands played, perhaps more. In any case, it was definitely higher than that of his opponents.

I’d end up writing more than a half-dozen posts on Blom. Probably the two most interesting were “Blombarded” and “What To Believe With Blom.” In the first, Blom raised with 9-8-suited, flopped trip eights, and managed to get value from a couple of opponents. In the second, a river bet by Blom won him a hand without a showdown, and his subsequent behavior and table talk suggested a bluff to have been highly likely.

Blom wore a light white hoody with the usual PokerStars patches, only occasionally putting the hood up over his head during the latter part of the day. He had on shorts and with his messed up hair looked even younger than 21. There was a moment late when the lights in the Amazon room were finally turned up after being dimmed for most of the day, and when I saw Blom squinting uncomfortably I couldn’t help but think of the stereotypical young online poker player who spends hours and hours inside in darkened rooms.

While he’d sometimes listen to music or check messages on his phone, he mostly seemed very intensely focused on the game, watching others carefully even on those rare occasions when he was not involved in a hand. When in a hand he’d often steal looks at his opponent(s), and I sensed a kind of nervous energy at times -- kind of an odd mix between being intimidating and vulnerable, which I know doesn’t exactly make sense.

What I mean is I think he was daunting largely because of his constant betting and raising and the fact that he really could show up with any hand at showdown, but he also showed a kind of anxiousness at certain moments that weirdly made him seem less invincible.

For example, in that hand in which he may or may not of bluffed the river, he covered his mouth with his shirt while his opponent thought about what to do, a kind of petrified look in his eyes, then after the fold was exhaling in a way that definitely looked like he was glad not to have been called (although I realized what seemed natural behavior could have been “overacting”).

Blom also engaged in table talk frequently, although usually only after a hand was done. And I only heard him talking about hands, not anything else.

If I had more time, I might be able to come up with a better summary of what it was like watching and writing about Blom all night. I know some of my colleagues like to do these “An Orbit With...” posts in which they watch a particularly compelling player play an entire orbit’s worth of hands and report on each. It occurred to me to try something like that last night -- Blom was playing so many hands, it was virtually certain something interesting would come amid a selection of nine consecutive ones. But I didn’t, both because there were many other tables to follow and because I tend not to want to hover too long in the same place when on the floor.

My buddy Brad “Otis” Willis is here in Vegas now, reporting on the WSOP for the PokerStars blog. He, too, is fascinated with Isildur1, and for a more studied example of blogging Blom, see his piece from yesterday “Viktor Blom Versus the World.”

It goes without saying that Blom is a “player to watch” going forward, not just because he’s a talented player who is likely to win, but because he’s a fascinating representative of a type -- the seemingly fearless online player who now finds himself in a live setting.

Where he can be watched.

Playing for Real Money: Haxton and Blom

Poker players talk a lot about finding the right stakes for one’s skill level. Usually the advice is to find limits where you can play comfortably, that is, where the amounts won’t influence you to the extent of negatively affecting your decision-making.

Meanwhile, there are certain types of gamblers who prefer playing limits where wins can produce tangible pleasure and losses genuine pain. You know, where what you are playing for is somehow most real, if that makes sense. I guess for a lot of players there’s a middle ground in there somewhere where the stakes are just right for them -- they can play without reservation, but winning or losing is gonna matter in the end.

Was thinking about all that a little this morning when reading about the heads-up match that took place between Viktor “Isildur1” Blom and Isaac “philivey2694” Haxton over the last three days on PokerStars. Wild stuff, that.

Recall how in early December 2010 Blom was signed as a Team PokerStars Pro, his identity still theoretically hidden although by then most everyone knew who the mysterious Swede was already. (Isildur1 would officially be revealed as Blom at the 2011 PCA a few weeks later.)

Soon after Isildur1 came on board at Stars, the “SuperStar Showdown” challenges involving Blom began, and Haxton was the first to take him on. Haxton would win that initial challenge by a relatively slim margin (not quite $42K).

Blom went on to play a dozen more SuperStar Showdowns over 2011 and early 2012, essentially winning them all save a rematch versus Haxton last month in which Ike beat him a second time by an even slimmer margin (just over $5K). Blom technically split two back-to-back matches versus Daniel Negreanu, although Blom was the overall winner, taking more than $123,000 off of Kid Poker during the almost 4,000 hands they played. (Here’s a page listing all of the Showdown results.)

Perhaps losing to Haxton twice inspired the ultra-competitive Blom to take him on again. Or maybe Haxton saw a chance to win more against an opponent against whom he’d built up some experience.

Whatever their motives, this time the two decided to raise the stakes considerably from the usual SuperStar Showdown format (2,500 hands, with $150K the most a player could lose). Here the pair would each sit down with $500K and play $200/$400 heads-up no-limit hold’em across four tables with no limit on the number of hands played. They’d play four hours a day, continuing until one had all the money.

Gotta think for these two upping the stakes made it all a little more “real.” If that makes sense.

You’ve probably heard already how it all went down. If not, check out the PokerStars blog where Change100 and Otis recapped all of the action from each of the three days the duel lasted.

On Saturday, they played just over 1,900 hands with Blom leaving nearly $200K up (Day 1 recap here). On Sunday, Haxton closed the gap for a while before Blom pushed out ahead again, ending the day over $285K ahead overall (Day 2 recap here). Then yesterday they played almost four more hours, with Blom finally taking the last of Haxton’s money, having won $500K total over 5,030 hands (Day 3 recap here).

I can’t help but think back to when we first heard about Isildur in late 2009, back when we really didn’t know who he was and he was multi-tabling against all of the Full Tilt Pros, winning millions off some and losing back millions to others.

Remember the $1,356,946.50 pot Isildur1 lost to Patrik Antonius? Remember the subsequent data-mining controversy and Isildur1 indicating an intention to file a “formal complaint” to FTP presumably in an effort to recover millions won from him? (He never did.) Remember others marveling at the multi-million dollar swings, with some -- including Team Full Tilter Mike Matusow -- describing the games as “not real poker”?

Matusow’s comments came in an interview on the Two Plus Two Pokercast back in March 2010. His point was a little complicated and not entirely clear, although it seemed to boil down to the idea that since a lot of those involved in the biggest games were FTP pros using money they’d gotten as part of their endorsement deals, the money was therefore not “real” to them.

“They’re just numbers,” said Matusow, referring to the mind-boggling amounts of the pots being shipped back and forth. “And it’s not real money. If them guys had to use their real money -- like if they were playing in a live game with those kind of moneys -- you think they’d be throwing it in like that?”

Of course, today we look back on all of that talk a lot differently, knowing, in fact, that a lot of the money being shipped back and forth on FTP really would turn out to be just numbers, and not “real” -- if not then (late 2009-early 2010), then later on, for sure.

Anyhow, it seems much more likely the half million clams Blom managed to take off of Haxton over the last three days was real enough. To them, anyway.

To the rest of us, though, it still seems pretty unreal.

Breaking Records in the Bahamas

Been following reports from the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure over the last few days, including the news of Viktor “Isildur1” Blom’s triumph in the $100K Super High Roller over the weekend.

Sort of a neat reprise of that revelation at the PCA almost exactly one year before when Blom finally confirmed once and for all what everyone already knew, namely, that he was in fact the Swingin’ Swede of online legend.

Blom won $1,254,400 for besting the field of 30 at the Super High Roller, his best live score by a long, long shot. When I saw that first prize, I couldn’t help but think back to that hand of $500/$1,000 pot-limit Omaha Blom lost to Patrik Antonius a little over two years ago on Full Tilt Poker, the one for which the pot totaled a mind-boggling $1,356,946.50.

Remember that? I suppose that still stands as a record as far as online poker goes.

Speaking of records, I was also kind of diverted on Sunday by the exploits of Randy “nanonoko” Lew at the PCA. Lew spent the day sitting at a computer, a couple of large monitors glowing before him, attempting to set a record for most hands of poker played during an eight-hour period while still turning a profit. (That is Lew pictured above, as photographed by the great Joe Giron.)

I’m not really sure what the previous record was supposed to be here, but in any case Lew did manage to establish a new standard by playing 23,493 hands and concluding with a small but significant profit of $7.93. That broke down to a shade under 49 hands per minute, if you can imagine that.

I believe he was moving back and forth between low limits and $5/$10 no-limit hold’em throughout the day. According to Brad “Otis” Willis’ report on the PokerStars blog, Lew was actually down as much as $1,200 at one point before grinding his way back into the black. And thus into the record books.

I’d have to go back through my own personal record books to see for certain, but I imagine the most hands I ever played in a single session was probably around 1,500 or so, and that probably took eight hours or thereabouts. I never got much beyond three-tabling, really, a far cry from the 40-ish tables Lew generally had going throughout the day.

In fact, after the first couple of years playing online, I gravitated towards shorter sessions (a hour or two) and one- or two-tabling, both because I tended to win more consistently playing that way and I found myself becoming less and less desirous to sit and play for long stretches.

As far as my biggest-ever pot goes, I remember losing a hand of PLO50 once that had ballooned up around $400 or so, half of which I had contributed. Straight flush over my aces full. Exquisite pain, that. Won a few big pots, too, but nothing that high. You know, just $1.356 million or so off the record.

Now, of course, I am strictly playing for nickels and dimes, nursing my two smallish rolls on Carbon and Hero, both earned in freerolls. And usually no more than a half-hour or hour at most. Looking back, I see I had a 300-plus hand session back in November, easily the longest I’ve played over the last half-year or so.

Blom is still just 21 years old. I believe Lew is 26. I guess it is safe to say both probably view money a little differently than do most of us. And time. And the relationship between the two.

Oh, and they both gots some skills, too.

Isildur1 Intrigues

Last Sunday I found my attention once more divided between college basketball and happenings on PokerStars.

As far as the b-ball went, my UNC Tarheels came back valiantly versus Kentucky only to lose in the end, their season ending one step shy of the Final Four. Kind of how the day went for me in that massive Sunday Storm tournament, actually, the one in which a whopping 113,770 players entered the $10+$1 event, thus creating a $1.13-plus million prize pool.

Got off to a good start, then stumbled a little after a couple of short stacks doubled through me after winning flips. Then a late setback saw me suddenly cut down to just a couple of big blinds as the cash bubble approached. Like the Heels I came up short, hitting the rail in 15,000th or so to finish a couple of hundred spots outside the money.

The ball game and my tourney run both ended, I turned my attention to the latest installment of the SuperStar Showdown, a “March Madness”-style buzzer-beater of a match between Viktor “Isildur1” Blom and Daniel Negreanu. After getting wiped out by Blom last week, Negreanu eeked out a win this time, having to make a huge comeback himself in order to do so.

These SuperStar Showdowns have been running for three months now, and I have to say a couple of things about them have surprised me somewhat.

One is the way the matches have remained interesting, something I can’t say I thought would be the case early on, especially after all the drama of the farce-slash-tragedy that was the Tony G match (the second one). After all, how could the sucker possibly remain intriguing after that?

But then came the wild one-blind win over the qualifier Attila “DodgyFish72” Gulcsik. And the two matches with Negreanu were both quite riveting, too.

Here are the results, by the way, of all seven SuperStar Showdown matches thus far (with links to Change100’s recaps):

1. Lost to Isaac Haxton, -$41,701, all NLHE (12/19/10)
2. Beat Tony G, +$44,820, half NLHE/half PLO (1/2/11)
3. Beat Daniel Cates, +$51,196, all NLHE (1/30/11)
4. Beat Eugene Katchalov, +$111,750, all NLHE (2/13/11)
5. Beat Attila “DodgyFish72” Gulcsik, +$10, all NLHE (2/27/11)
6. Beat Daniel Negreanu, +$150,000 (1,439 hands), all NLHE (3/20/11)
7. Lost to Daniel Negreanu, -$26,500, all NLHE (3/27/11)

One other aspect of the Showdowns that has surprised me a little is the way they appear to have affected Blom’s reputation and/or image, both among his opponents and (by extension) among those of us watching from the rail. At least it seems as though something along those lines is occurring as a result of these matches.

Players who have participated in these SuperStar Showdowns have consistently praised Blom as a crafty, difficult opponent. However, more often than not the respect they convey is delivered in terms that make the so-called “King of Swing” seem a lot more “human” (for want of a better word) than he perhaps appeared even just a few months before.

Prior to the first Showdown -- and especially back when the mysterious Swede first arrived on the scene in late 2009 -- Isildur1 existed as kind of a prototypical ramblin’ gamblin’ force of nature, reckless with his bankroll, willing to take on all comers, anytime, anywhere. And his anonymity only added further to his mythical-like stature.

I remember hearing Patrik Antonius talk about Isildur1 to Phil Gordon in a video from December 2009. “He’s a very interesting opponent,” Antonius said, noting how he considered Isildur1 “very dangerous” because of his unrelenting aggression and willingness to gamble. He “wants to make big decisions all the time,” added Antonius, a penchant that necessarily meant his opponents frequently were being forced to do the same, like it or not.

While somewhat specific in his analysis of Isildur1's play, the unknown opponent who “came out of nowhere” (as Gordon noted) still seemed hard to picture as a living, breathing member of the species to which you and I belong. Now, more than a year later, everything is different with regard to Isildur1/Blom, with these SuperStar Showdowns having a lot to do with the change.

Isaac Haxton set the tone for this different way of talking about Blom in his comments following that first match. Haxton, a highly-experienced, no-limit hold’em heads-up specialist, admitted that while Blom wasn’t necessarily the best opponent he’d ever faced, “no one has ever more consistently made me miserable when playing against them.”

“Isildur’s brand of over the top -- but carefully balanced -- aggression is unlike anything I’ve played against,” added Haxton, saying that Blom’s game successfully took him out of his “comfort zone in a lot of situations.”

Other of Blom’s opponents -- with the exception of the ever-hyperbolic Tony G who ended his match proclaiming “isildur1 is hte legend” (sic) -- have spoken of him in similar fashion, right up to Negreanu who following their second match similarly said of Isildur1 that he wasn’t nearly as “wild” or “crazy” a player as his reputation perhaps might lead one to believe -- in no-limit hold’em, anyway (not PLO), where Negreanu’s estimation was that his game was anything but reckless, and in fact “solid.”

When a hand reaches showdown, that’s when players’ cards are finally exposed. I guess that’s kind of what is happening in these SuperStar Showdowns, too, with the gradual exposure of Isildur1/Blom, one match at a time.

But even the more “human”-seeming version of the young Swede continues to fascinates many, which is why I think the SuperStar Showdown will keep capturing interest going forward. As will Blom, especially once he finally turns 21 (which doesn’t happen until August or September, I believe).

Blom By One Big Blind? Couldn’t Have Scripted That

Last night the Oscars were awarded. Was a bit distracted, though I did manage to watch some of the show with Vera.

Was flipping back to that exciting Knicks-Heat game for much of it, while also following the Sunday Warm-Up on PokerStars for which I wrote a recap. (Infected a bit by all the movie talk, I had a little fun in the wrap by referring to a number of films that had won Best Picture over the years -- check it out.)

Early in the evening I also found myself keeping an eye on that latest “SuperStar Showdown” involving Viktor “Isildur1” Blom and the qualifier Attila “DodgyFish72” Gulcsik. Gulcsik had prevailed in an $11 satellite to win the right to battle the swingy Swede.

Whereas the usual format for the Showdowns calls for Blom and his opponent to play $50/$100 blinds and bring at least $150,000 of their own money with which to play, in this special version the game was played with $5/$10 blinds and Gulcsik was staked with $15,000. Gulcsik would win whatever he had left from the original stake after 2,500 hands versus Blom, plus any profits, if there were any. Also, if either player managed to win all of the other’s $15K, that player would earn an additional $10,000.

I had the four tables of heads-up, no-limit hold’em open for a while early on, watching as Blom surged to a more than $10,000 lead by the halfway point. I wasn’t watching as closely during the second half of the match, but noticed folks tweeting that DodgyFish72 was closing the gap.

As Change100 recounts in her recap of the match, a flurry of all-in hands mostly won by Gulscik had brought him within just under $2,500 with 200 hands to go. Then came a couple more $1K-ish pots that went the qualifier’s way, and suddenly the pair were nearly even.

On the very last hand -- the 2,500th played -- Blom open-shoved from the button over the top of the $1,600 or so Gulscik had at that table, and DodgyFish72 folded. As it turned out, the $10 big blind Blom grabbed on that hand turned out to be the difference in the match, as the final tally showed Isildur1 just $10 ahead.

After being ahead by more than 1,000 big blinds, Blom won the match by one?!? Incredible.

Maybe it was the Oscars -- or Change100’s recap, in which she refers to the way the match ultimately failed to adhere to the usual cinematic formula of the underdog winning in the end -- but when contemplating what had transpired in the Showdown I found myself thinking about one of my all-time favorite movies, The Bad News Bears.

Saw this one in the theater when I was a little leaguer myself. Loved it then, and still love it today. I remember my parents being a bit surprised at the language used in the PG-rated flick, but for me getting to hear the kids say those words was just one of the film’s many excellent attributes.

If you haven’t seen the movie before and want to, I’ll warn you now I’m about to give away the ending. (And by the way, I’m talking about the original 1976 film directed by Michael Ritchie and starring Walter Matthau and Tatum O’Neal, not the terribad remake from 2005 with Billy Bob Thornton.)

In the film, Matthau plays Morris Buttermaker, an alcoholic and ex-minor leaguer who gets recruited (coerced, really) to coach the Bears, a squad made up of players not good enough to make the other teams in the league. In their first game they fall behind the Denny’s team (named the Yankees, natch) by 26 runs before Buttermaker forfeits.

Eventually Buttermaker brings in a couple of ringers to join the team, the hard-hitting Kelly (Jackie Earle Haley) and a girl pitcher Amanda (O’Neal) who is the daughter of an ex-girlfriend. Bolstered by the new additions, the Bears improve dramatically and make it all of the way to the championship game versus the hated Yankees.

A ton of fun stuff along the way, including a perhaps obvious (but no less important) lesson about adults being overly competitive when playing out their desires and needs through the kids. Along those lines, Buttermaker has a revelation of sorts during the championship game and near the end pulls the starters in order to give the scrubs some time on the field. The move causes the Bears to fall behind 7-3 heading into the bottom of the last inning, thereby setting up the film’s awesome climax.

The Yankees record the first two outs with little trouble, then a walk, a successful bunt, and another walk load the bases for Kelly. The Yankees actually try to issue an intentional walk to the dangerous Kelly (and give the Bears a run), but he lunges across the plate to hit one of the outside pitches anyway, driving it into the outfield and to the wall.

The music swells as three runs score, then Kelly charges toward the plate. But the relay throw arrives a moment before he does and... he’s... out.



The Bears -- like DodgyFish72 -- come up just short.

But as Change100 notes at the end of her Showdown recap, “even though David didn’t defeat Goliath, it sure feels like he won.” By film’s end, it is obvious that being a Bear is much, much preferable to being a Yankee. “Why are we celebrating?” asks one of the kids in the clubhouse as Buttermaker surprisingly delivers them beers from his cooler (no shinola!).

“Because you should be damn proud of yourselves,” explains the coach.

As should DodgyFish72, the one with whom -- like the Bears -- the great majority of us can identify with much more readily than with the other guy. Of course, while technically he “lost” he still gets to keep $14,990, a sweet consolation prize for sure.

I imagine he might use some of that to buy himself a beer or two.

Viktor Blom is Isildur1 and Other Revelations

Everyone knew already.

That is to say -- among those who follow such things, anyway -- no one was surprised by the announcement on Saturday down at the Atlantis Resort and Casino that Viktor Blom was indeed Isildur1. On the heels of the announcement, our man Otis swiftly published a cool feature in which he spoke with Blom, an introduction of sorts to the 20-year-old Swede about whom so much has been written since late 2009.

Jokes about this “worst kept secret” in poker have been part of the fun, of course. So has the sometimes-serious, sometimes-not speculation about Isildur1’s identity. I’m thinking of Dr. Pauly’s faux “interview” with Blom from last spring. Or Jen Newell and I contemplating in our “He Said/She Said” columns at Woman Poker Player the significance of how most assumed (correctly, as it happened) from the get-go that Isildur1 had to be a man.

Some have suggested PokerStars might’ve derived additional benefit from prolonging the mystery even further. However, it appears that doing so wouldn’t really have been feasible, especially if Blom were to continue to play in live events. According to the PokerStars piece, the offer to become a Team Pro “came with a price” -- namely, that Blom would have to end the charade once and for all.

“It felt like the right time,” Blom told Otis. And in truth, despite all the fun and intrigue, for the guessing game to have lasted more than a year was probably long enough.

A couple of thoughts came to mind for me following the “revelation” on Saturday. One was that no matter who Isildur1 turned out to be, we knew him pretty well already -- a seemingly fearless, ultra-aggressive, unpredictable player who in a few short months had managed to gain the respect and/or awe of many of the world’s top pros.

In the Stars piece he tells how he turned $2,000 into $2 million in just three weeks. We know how he took a lot of that roll to Full Tilt Poker and built it even higher before crashing hard against Brian Hastings (et al.) in December 2009. According to Poker Table Ratings, Blom has been involved in all 10 of the biggest pots in online poker history (and 18 of the top 20), including that monstrous $1,356,946.50 PLO pot Patrik Antonius won off of him.

That “Isildur1” turns out to be a private, perhaps even a bit shy young man in need of a haircut (or at least a comb) certainly adds to the portrait, but those details hardly distinguish him. It’s the force-of-nature-like online persona with which those details contrast that makes them at all interesting, really.

The other thought I had while reading about Blom’s introduction in the Bahamas was how it kind of dramatized something that happens to all of us when we play poker, albeit in a much more extravagant, even grandiose way. That is the way poker forces us to “reveal” our true selves, so to speak.

That second thought probably occurred to me because I’m about to start teaching that course I mentioned last week, the “Poker in American Film and Culture” class in which we’ll be reading all sorts of discussions of poker and its significance. In particular, I’m thinking about one of our first scheduled readings, the playwright David Mamet’s short essay from 1986 called “The Things Poker Teaches Us.”

Among the several points Mamet makes, he mentions how “poker reveals to the frank observer something... of import -- it will teach him about his own nature.” It’s inevitable, really. The more we play, the more we necessarily reveal about our characters or our true “natures” -- both to our opponents and to ourselves.

Such a process had been happening with Isildur1 for quite a while now. We (and his opponents) had been getting to know him more and more with each passing hand. The revelation of his “real” name and other biographical details perhaps adds further to the character sketch, though the process had been ongoing for quite some now.

Mamet gets into various psychological traits such as “a need to be abused” or “a need to be loved” and so forth in his catalogue of such disclosures, though I’m sure you can imagine other elements of the self that poker potentially exposes. As Anthony Holden says in Big Deal (another text we’ll be looking at this semester), “a man’s character is stripped bare at the poker table.”

That second thought might have been a little abstract, but you get the idea. We know Isildur1/Blom a little better today. And so do his opponents. And I imagine many of us will keep watching, seeing what else gets revealed