Viktor “Isildur1” Blom, known around the poker world for his love of high stakes poker games, has made poker history by beating out the rest of the competition in the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Super High Roller event. This is his first win in a major tournament, and it may herald a new era of action for this Team PokerStars Pro, who has never before been known for his live game.
Blom had to beat out some pretty heavy competition to win this particular title– sharing the final table with him were Daniel Negreanu, fellow Team PokerStars Pro Humberto Brenes, Galen Hall, who won the PCA Main Event in 2010, and 2010 WSOP Main Event winner Jonathan Duhamel, who was back on his feet not a month after the notorious violent attack against him. Brenes was the first player out at the final table, followed by Mike “Timex” McDonald and Scott Seiver in the bubble seat. Negreanu made the first money finish and left with $250,900, while Duhamel followed him to the rail and would go home with $313,600. Hall held on a while longer, finishing in third place with $470,400, and the head to head play was ultimately resolved by Blom’s ability to hang in there longer than Dan Shak, who was eventually booted as the runner up. Shak made a hefty $846,700, however, which isn’t shabby for a day’s work. Blom made an impressive $1,254,400 for his first place win.
Because Blom can best be described as a rather volatile player, whose record is filled with big (online) wins and losses alike, the poker community’s big question is whether or not Blom will hold on to any of his winnings for very long. Most assume that he can’t, and that his winnings will stay in the poker community and will be cycled into the hands of other players pretty quickly. To date, the record most commonly cited in reference to Blom was his substantial losses at the hands of Patrik Antonius (the $1.4 million pot was the largest online pot at the time) and Brian Hastings, who cleaned his clock for $4.2 million, the largest gain/loss in a day of online poker. Whether or not his old habits stick with him, the 21 year old Swede certainly seems to have a promising live career ahead of him.
Blom has been laying low for the past several months, presumably to build up his bankroll and go through his now almost ceremonial retreat to lick his wounds following a rousing defeat. Now that he’s back, fellow players are asking themselves if he is simply up to his old tricks– catching opponents off guard and putting them in tight spots, being persistently aggressive– or if something has changed about him. Since his return, Blom hasn’t seemed like a new player– just a slightly better version of the player that he used to be. He’s snatched money from some of the biggest names in poker during the last month, and with his most recent win, we can expect to see a lot more of Blom in the live poker scene during the coming year. 2012 will also be the first year that the Swede will be old enough to participate in the World Series of Poker, and it would be a good idea to keep your eye on this player. If there’s one thing we know about Viktor Blom, is that anything is possible.