It’s been quite some time since a single name has been the cause of such a stir in the online poker community. It’s easy to understand why so much buzz surrounds Isildur1 – he (or she) benefits from the intrigue that arises when an unknown (in this case, literally) arises and challenges those at the top of any pursuit, and it’s especially good fodder for the myth-machine when they don’t just challenge, but prevail.
Who is Isildur1? Who has the internet phenom beaten and who has profited from his missteps? How much money has this mystery player from Sweden gone through during this historic (within the relatively short context of online poker) run? Does it have to stop, or are we witnessing the birth of a new fixture on the high-stakes scene? The answers to those questions and more below.
IT’S A ZERO SUM GAME
Minus the rake, poker is a zero-sum game. What one player wins, another loses. In the world of high-stakes poker, that’s a fact with unusual implications, as an action player like Isildur1 can not only create new games but also moves money from the pocket of one high-stakes player to another. In essence, Isildur1 loosened up the flow of high stakes money by allowing players who beat him access to the cash of players who Isildur1 beat, an especially neat trick considering that some of the winners (Brian Townsend) would generally never play some of the losers (Tom Dwan). Let’s walk through the Isildur1 balance sheet from October 1st through November 30th.
As if we needed another exhibit to be added to the evidence list supporting Phil Ivey’s claim to the title of Greatest of All Time: the FTP pro picked nearly 3m from Isildur1′s pocket, the largest recipient of Isildur1′s substantial losses. Right behind Ivey is Brian Townsend, who picked an awesome time to come out of PLO retirement. The story goes like this: Townsend had pulled most of his cahs offline and was moving from PLO to mixed games. By coincidence, a decent amount of debt owed to him was paid online right about the time the Isildur games were heating up. Townsend evidently liked what he saw and had one of the more triumphant returns to the ring with a total win of about 2.1 million.
Patrik Antonius seemed to have Isildur tagged in the early going, with several million of the Swede’s dollars in his account after massive sessions, but Isildur staged an impressive comeback that cut Patrik’s take to just shy of 600k. Patrik rebounded somewhat and added about another million in an intense session at the end of November, putting him up about 1.6m on Isildur1 as of 12/01. Brian Hastings, PLO specialist, rounds out the top five winners vs Isildur with a nice win of about 130k.
Seems tough, but Isildur was still a profitable player for most of those months. That is largely thanks to one man: Tom Dwan. The cash phenom known as durrrrr dumped 5.2m to Isildur over some historic sessions. We used to think the whole red pro curse was bunk, but it’s tough to ignore the fact that Tom went on one of the grossest downswings ever within days of the ink drying on his FTP contract.
Dwan had some help – Cole South put about 550k in Isildur’s wallet (or Townsend’s, if you prefer) and David Benyamine chipped in a little over 560k. Haseeb Qureshi added 450k or so to the pile and a handful of other players had small six-figure losses to the mystery man from Sweden.
$626,703. After all is said and done, that’s the amount Isildur1 ended down as of December 1st. His best game? $500/$1000 NLH 6-max, with a total win of 2.5m or so. His worst game? $200/$400 PLO Heads up, where he dropped about 2.2m (most of that to Townsend). At his peak, he was up just a shade over $5 million dollars. On his way to that total he had a single day high of 1.4m in profit; on his descent, he had a single high loss day of 2.7m.
THE MAN BEHIND THE MASK BEHIND THE AVATAR
There have been all manner of guesses regarding the identity of Isildur1. It’s actually fairly surprising that the secret has been kept for as long as it has. Some people thought it might be recent high stakes flameout martonas coming back under a different name, or even Cirque Du Soleil head Guy Laliberté. Speculation continues to come back to one name – Viktor Blom.
The only hard confirmation of Isildur’s identity at this point is the word of TonyG, who would possibly be in a position to know given his spot as head of a poker room that runs on the iPoker Network, where Blom is a fixture at the high stakes games. Quote from Tony’s blog:
“I don’t want to talk too much about Isildur1 but I can reveal to all it is Viktor and he crushed them on the iPoker network for some time. I actually played a few hands with him today and quite many on iPoker where my site TonyG Poker runs. I honestly respect this guy 100%. He has proved that he is the best player in the game right now; this is based on many, many hands on iPoker and Full Tilt Poker.”
There’s a bit of mystery surrounding Blom, so naming him as Isildur1 is a pretty safe bluff, as Blom doesn’t seem eager to offer himself up for media access. Tony also has a bit of a reputation as someone not afraid to make brash pronouncements for the sake of publicity. That said, he’s not the only one pushing the Blom hypothesis, and while it might be a speculative conclusion, it’s the most solid of a group of competing conclusions at this point.
Blom denied that he was Isildur in a brief comment to Bluff Magazine: “I am not the one you are looking for. Keep searching.” Why would he deny it if he is the mystery man? Privacy, security – but most likely taxes. Making his identity public would expose Isildur1 to a serious potential tax burden as a Swede, certainly severe enough to motivate a person to protect their identity.
Of course, the whole thing could just be a tax dodge by Tom Dwan. We may never know.
You can watch Isildur1 slug it out with some of the biggest names in poker by downloading Full Tilt Poker. Click here to view our rakeback offer for FTP before you sign up.
