Viktor “Isildur1” Blom: The Story of Millions of Ups and Downs

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If you are suddenly interested to know who is the most famous poker pro in Sweden, what would be the answer? Most likely you will recall Isildur1, because it is he who is most widely associated with poker in Sweden. All in all, who is Isildur1 actually?

Viktor Blom was born on September 26, 1990, in southwest Sweden, in the province of Dalsland. He has found fame thanks to an incredibly aggressive game at numerous tables of the highest limits. Pot Limit Omaha and No Limit Hold’em have become his favorite games.

Getting a Foot in the Door: Blom’s Career Start

Viktor was the youngest of four children in his family, where he had two sisters and an elder brother, Sebastian. The latter taught Viktor to play poker when he was just fourteen. Blom quickly got used to playing and after a few days embarked upon micro-limit games with buy-ins of $3- $7 with his friends.

When Viktor was fifteen, he decided with his brother to try online poker, so they made a deposit in one of the online rooms. In the first MT tournament, they managed to reach the final table and take fifth place, which brought them $300.

They decided to share the prize, and his brother created an account on another site, so Viktor kept playing under the nickname “Blom90.” As a result, in several months, the fifteen-year-old boy won $275,000.

The future poker pro started playing expensive SnG tournaments and high-stakes cash games. He was not very successful and lost all his money. Taking a short break, he returned with a balance of $3,000 to build a new bankroll.

In just a few days, the amount in his account grew to $50,000. After that, Blom continued to play on the $10- $20 limit, keenly studying the peculiarities of this format.

At seventeen, the young and promising player made a deposit on PartyPoker, where he caught the upstreak and won $200,000 within a few days. Then Viktor tried the iPoker network, where he won $1.7 million in a couple of weeks, after which he took a break from the game.

Mastering Online Poker

It was 2009 when Isildur1 story started. Online poker was flourishing. An incredibly aggressive player named Isildur1 appeared in one of the most famous poker rooms of the time. Moving to FullTiltPoker, Blom immediately started playing on $500-$1000 limits against famous poker professionals, including Phil Ivey and Patrick Antonius. Blom played the largest $1.3 million pot in the history of online poker with the latter. That was a record amount that online poker cannot match today.

Following his victory over Antonius, Blom matched up against young Tom Dwan. The duel on six tables continued over the course of a week and ended with Isildur1’s complete defeat of Dwan; Isildur1 won almost $4 million. Blom’s bankroll reached a record amount of $6 million, and he continued playing, spreading more and more rumors about himself. However, the lows occurred just as fast as the highs. Isildur1 lost most of the bankroll in heads-up with Ivey, Antonius, and Brian Hastings.

The Falling of the Star

How could one lose $5.5 million? For most players, this is beyond the pale, but Isildur1 would not be a legend if he were not ready for such a fall. First, Patrick Antonius offered Blom a rematch, during which he managed to win $3 million. This game was the biggest win and loss in the history of online poker. Nevertheless, Viktor was able to regain $2 million in a subsequent rematch.

Thereafter, Blom challenged one of the most successful poker players – Phil Ivey. This duel was incredibly difficult for Viktor, who lost more than $3 million. Despite the loss, he was glad to know that Ivey called him the most difficult opponent of all those whom Ivey had played.

The last straw was a scandalous game against Brian Hastings, which lasted five hours and made Hastings a new online poker record holder, winning $4.2 million. Later it turned out that Hastings used the database of Isildur1’s hands, which included hands played against Brian Townsend and Cole “CTS” South. This violated the rules of FullTiltPoker and the accounts of the whole trio were temporarily frozen.

After a series of failures, Isildur1’s balance was in the red by $2.2 million, and he left the high-stakes fields for a while.

Isildur1 Is Back

In December 2010, PokerStars announced that Isildur1 would join their team. They decided to launch a series of SuperStars Showdown tournaments, where players would have the opportunity to play against the high stakes legend.

In January 2011, the identity of Isildur1 was revealed in the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure series. After signing the contract, Viktor began to play offline tournaments more often.
It is symbolic that, exactly a year after declaring his identity, in the same Caribbean Series, Blom won his first offline tournament. It was Super HighRoller with a buy-in of $100,000 and a prize of $1.2 million for the winner.

Viktor completely returned to online poker in 2014, frequently appearing at the FullTiltPoker and PokerStars cash tables. The beginning of 2014 went well; it even brought Viktor $2.2 million at the peak. However, the year ended with a loss of $1.7 million on FTP and $295,000 on PS.

A breakthrough happened in the fall of 2015 when Blom won $4.8 million. Continuing to play until the end of the year, he coped with the swings and ended the year with a result of +$3.5 million on PokerStars and – $1.3 on FullTiltPoker. The difference was $2.1 million, so 2015 was the best year for Viktor Blom. There were also rumors that he had successfully played on the Microgaming network under the nickname “Hrskar,” so that the exact numbers could be higher.

However, the swing in the results did not leave him in 2016. The losses were pursuing him all year and his result of -$489,000 was one of the worst in 2016. The same year, Amaya announced the closure of FullTiltPoker.

Isildur1’s return in 2017 was a triumph. Isildur1 won almost $2 million, successfully performing both in cash games and in MT tournaments. He won prizes in 17 SCOOP tournaments at PokerStars, won the WCOOP Horse, and took up one of the top lines of that year’s HighstakesDB ranking.

The series of Viktor Blom’s victories and defeats is admired by all poker fans, but the main question remains…

How Much Did He Win?

Viktor Isildur1 Blom won many offline and online tournaments, but it’s not easy to calculate his profits. Most likely, he received six-figure sums from sponsorship contracts with PokerStars, FullTiltPoker, and Unibet, but the exact Isildur net worth remains unknown.

Nevertheless, some sites estimate his income at about $5 m, and Isildur1 takes 21st place in the list of high rollers with an amount of $2.6 m. The exciting story of the ups and downs of Isildur1 continues, but there is no doubt that this player has already written himself into the history of online poker.