It all started 13 years ago. "Pokermiljonen" aired on Swedish national TV and a 15-year old boy was watching, intrigued by the game and the large sums of money that swapped hands. His older brother sat beside him, and they started playing heads-up together. Viktor Blom's first game of poker was a fact.
It was 2005 when Viktor Blom, a 15-year old guy from Sweden started playing poker with his older brother and a couple of friends. They often came together and played home games with a buy-in of 3$-7$. Sometimes they would run a tournament. That's where Viktor got his first huge cash of his career: a win in a field of 25 players with a buy-in of 7 dollars. A nice little amount of cash, still relevant for the 15-year old boy at the time.
In the same year Viktor and his brother signed up for an online poker room with a shared bankroll of 100$. The two quickly hopped in a $11 dollar tournament and managed to cash out for 300$. Of course luck was involved, but the bankroll of the Blom brothers was set up for success. Not much later, Viktor wanted to play separately and created the account "Blom90", where he started playing short-handed Sit-and-Go's. A good decision, since Blom was playing 530$ SnG's in no time. Viktor quickly realized that he had to play very aggressive towards the later stages of a tournament, since way too much people started to play more tight and defensive when the money jumps came into play. He exploited that obvious weakness in the games of many and kept winning big, to the point where he had 1.7 million SEK (+- 275k$) behind his name.
And that's where the story took a drastic turn. As quickly as he had made his fortune, he started losing it. Suddenly there was only a few 1000 left on the account of Blom90, and it got to the point where Viktor had to lend 2000$ from one of his best friends to recover his losses. He played all night, and managed to lose the extra 2k as well. Suddenly Blom was bankrupt, had blown away all his savings and even owed money to someone else. He had lost +- $280k and was left with nothing. On top of that, his extreme long poker sessions had made him skip classes and he was about to lose his government-funding. He had to move back in with his parents and had to promise never to play poker again. Blom lost control over his own life. He had his back against the wall and had three options: Go home and quit poker, find a job and quit poker, or play poker and win everything back.
We all know which option he chose. Blom managed to borrow an additional 15k and loaded up once again. He started playing 200NL heads-up no limit and quickly had all his money on the tables again. He grinded for two days straight and managed to bounce back once more. He payed off his debts and after swinging back and forth, Blom found himself at the 10k NL tables once again with 300k$ to his name. The legend was back.
A few years later, in October of 2009, a mysterious account named "isildur1" started to dominate the tables on FullTiltPoker, the most popular site there was at the time. Nobody knew who he was, but it was clear that he had the money to play with the big boys. He bought in the biggest games at the time and played everyone who was willing to sit with him. This attracted the biggest and most famous players of the time like Phil Ivey, Patrick Antonius and Ilari Sahamies to sit with him and play hour-long sessions. Isildur1 clearly wasn't afraid and battled them all, simultaneously. He stood out with his fearless and extremely aggressive plays, and he bested everyone that came in it's path.
His bankroll grew like no one had seen before, and soon he was ready to fight the king of FTP: Tom "durrrr" Dwan, who had won millions on the site in previous months. The two fought the biggest battle the poker world has ever seen. In a five-week during battle they swinged millions back and forth, until Isildur1 dealt the final blow: Durrrr had lost 5 million dollars to isildur1, and Full Tilt Poker had a new King.
Sadly for Blom history would repeat itself pretty soon after that. During his incredibly run, there were a couple of people who started recording every hand and analyzed his play into perfection. After the big win of isildur over Blom, a new challenger suddenly sat at his table. "Stinger88" looked like he had an answer to every play in Blom's playbook. Viktor would go on the tilt of a lifetime, and managed to lose 4.2 million in one day. It happened again: Viktor Blom was busto.
The graph of isildur1 on Pokerstars
The years after that it went quiet around the name of isildur1. It looked like he finally gave up on poker... Until he re-appeared in August of 2015 at the nosebleed (highest possible stakes) tables of Pokerstars. Viktor was on a mission, and wanted to prove the poker-world once more that he was and still is the best player the world has ever seen. In a time span of 2 months he managed to win 4 million dollars, and although he lost a significant amount of that back in 2016, isildur1 still has over 2 million to his name to date and is still active on the online poker tables. These days though, Viktor Blom is making more and more appearances in live-tournaments. Last month he attended the partypoker main event in Germany and took home a solid 1st place prize of 1 million dollar in incredible fashion.
The man became a myth, and is still a legend to this day.
Thanks for reading.
See you next time.
The making of Viktor "Isildur1" Blom - Part 1
The making of Viktor "Isildur1" Blom - Part 2
The making of Viktor "Isildur1" Blom - Part 3
The legend of Isildur1
