Isildur1 aka Viktor Blom a whale?

We all know this and I'm sure PS also knows this.
My question is this.
Do you think PS signed such a whale in hopes that FTPs big names would follow him(dead money) over to PS?

sensationalism...they signed him because it created a buzz which brought PS some attention. IMO its simply an advertising game for them.

Jeight said:

sensationalism...they signed him because it created a buzz which brought PS some attention. IMO its simply an advertising game for them.

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I think it's more than just advertising as PS is already one of the big internet sites.
When you play cash tables and run into a huge fish, do you not mark him and proceed to follow him around just to get all his money he's willing to give away?

You see my point?
Why sign a losing player unless you have a feeling the sharks will eventually follow?
And he is a losing player, down a little over 2mil according to pokertableratings

Despite his presumed losses I don't think anyone would consider Blom to be a poor player, or a whale as you call him.

I think they signed someone that FT didnt.... maybe they will get some extra peeps from tilt ...but I dont see it

If they sign Hellmouth ....which is where i think he's going then they may have signed a star.

do u think in todays world the average player or high roller jumps because of a signing?

shinedown.45 said:

I think it's more than just advertising as PS is already one of the big internet sites.
When you play cash tables and run into a huge fish, do you not mark him and proceed to follow him around just to get all his money he's willing to give away?

You see my point?
Why sign a losing player unless you have a feeling the sharks will eventually follow?
And he is a losing player, down a little over 2mil according to pokertableratings

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[ ] Viktor Blom is a huge fish

He is so good at NLH HU that no one hardly will play him

Obvious troll is obvious.

I never understood the allure of websites signing a pro. 99.99999% of the people on that website will probably never play against them

shinedown.45 said:

And he is a losing player, down a little over 2mil according to pokertableratings

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PTR doesn't tell the whole story. he started out playing on euro sites. also he participated in the biggest pot in online history, so when you lose almost $700,000 in one hand of poker being stuck 2 million isn't much.

he pretty much created all the buzz and excitement at the nosebleeds the last year and a half. He was the biggest unsigned name out there.

This was posted when he was making his WSOPE run:
Sunday, 26 September 2010

Viktor Blom is just a sick, sick individual. There is no other way to say it. At this juncture it doesn’t even matter if he is Isildur1 or not – he obviously is but he’s still keeping schtum about it – because having watched him tear through the field at the £10,350 WSOPE Main Event I am fully prepared to believe that I am watching one of the best No Limit Hold ‘em players in the world. And he’s 19 years old!
Isildur1 is famed for his overbets, which he will make for value, as a bluff or for razor-thin value with middle pair. I’ve seen five overbets from Blom over the past two days he has been playing and they resulted in three folds and two calls. Two of the three times he got folds; he showed a pure bluff (eight high and one pair on a A-K-9-T board); both times he was called he had the best hand. How you can hand-read so well is beyond me.


Even if he isn’t Isildur1, which he is, then the story of Blom90 – who he definitely is – is amazing as well. He was playing $530 STTs on PartyPoker in 2005 at the age of 15; he ran up a $2,000 deposit to $1,500,000 in five weeks playing heads-up cash before taking out half a million and losing the rest before doing it again. He has a huge stack at the moment and I hope he makes the final table because THAT will be fine TV.

the lab man said:

I think they signed someone that FT didnt.... maybe they will get some extra peeps from tilt ...but I dont see it

If they sign Hellmouth ....which is where i think he's going then they may have signed a star.

do u think in todays world the average player or high roller jumps because of a signing?

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I think there is a better chance Hellmuth will sign with the wsop online site.

No it just brought attention to PS..But the real cash player will sign with FTP. Sad that Isildur1 signed with PS for the money but cant say anything i would have done the same...

He never would have signed with full tilt. Some of their red pros did data mining on him and used that information to take a ton of money off him. Data mining is against tilt's written policy and THEIR PROS did it and admitted they did it. He found out and demanded a refund from the site. They refused.

I would understand their refusal to refund that money if it was a third party who had broken the rules, but it was someone representing the site. There is no excuse for their pros to break the rules and still be supported by the site.

I don't know anything about isildur1, all this is taken from poker podcast interviews of Daniel Negreanu and Tony G, both of whom feel like isildur1 was cheated.

Six Hurdles said:

He never would have signed with full tilt. Some of their red pros did data mining on him and used that information to take a ton of money off him. Data mining is against tilt's written policy and THEIR PROS did it and admitted they did it. He found out and demanded a refund from the site. They refused.

I would understand their refusal to refund that money if it was a third party who had broken the rules, but it was someone representing the site. There is no excuse for their pros to break the rules and still be supported by the site.

I don't know anything about isildur1, all this is taken from poker podcast interviews of Daniel Negreanu and Tony G, both of whom feel like isildur1 was cheated.

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Lol he was not cheated. Datamining is like so lol.

I don't have any opinion about data mining, in fact don't even know what it is exactly. My opinion is simply this: It is against full tilt's rules that you agree to when you join the site. If that is the case then when someone payed by full tilt breaks that policy full tilt should uphold their own rules. If it wasn't proven and admitted then, yeah, the onus is on isildur to prove it. When they admit breaking full tilt's policies as an emissary of full tilt then full tilt should be responsible.

When you make an agreement, ie I will not use datamining, and then break it, any monies you made as a direct result of breaking your agreement should be forfeit.

You do realize ftp does like nothing to people caught datamining right? They do not confiscate winnings for datamining. That point is mute. If you dont know what datamining is please to dont try to act like it is a big deal. Im not saying it should be allowed or anything but it is bound to happen and it is happening so no big deal. 2nl players datamine. It is everywhere and nothing major.

You seem to be quite adept at missing the point. I will say this again, but slower. I don't care about datamining. I care that it is against full tilt's user agreement and their own pros broke that agreement, thereby gaining an advantage. THEY BROKE THEIR WORD THAT THEY GAVE BY CLICKING THE LITTLE BUTTON SAYING THEY HAVE READ AND AGREE TO THE USER AGREEMENT. I never made the claim that datamining was a big deal, at least not before now.

I looked up what datamining is all about. You are able to buy hand histories for users, even if you were not involved in the hands in question. I don't know how you can say this is no big deal. That is the essence of head up play, figuring out your opponent's patterns and tendencies and adjusting to them before they figure out your's. If you go into a head up battle with an opponent that knows nothing about you but you have studied every one of their hands, you don't think that is an advantage? Probably not for the average poker player but it is a crippling tool for someone who absolutely knows how to use that info to its greatest potential.

Six Hurdles said:

You seem to be quite adept at missing the point. I will say this again, but slower. I don't care about datamining. I care that it is against full tilt's user agreement and their own pros broke that agreement, thereby gaining an advantage. THEY BROKE THEIR WORD THAT THEY GAVE BY CLICKING THE LITTLE BUTTON SAYING THEY HAVE READ AND AGREE TO THE USER AGREEMENT. I never made the claim that datamining was a big deal, at least not before now.

I looked up what datamining is all about. You are able to buy hand histories for users, even if you were not involved in the hands in question. I don't know how you can say this is no big deal. That is the essence of head up play, figuring out your opponent's patterns and tendencies and adjusting to them before they figure out your's. If you go into a head up battle with an opponent that knows nothing about you but you have studied every one of their hands, you don't think that is an advantage? Probably not for the average poker player but it is a crippling tool for someone who absolutely knows how to use that info to its greatest potential.

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While it is an advantage, you do realise they played a lot of hands before and the match went on for a few thousand hands as well.... Its not like they registered a new account and played him as an unknown.

The kid needs a Hair Cut... but I guess it was all a big publicity stunt for PokerStars... to bust up their name...

Marginal said

"While it is an advantage, you do realise they played a lot of hands before and the match went on for a few thousan hands as well.... Its not like they registered a new account and played him as an unknown."



Ok, that's a fair point, however if they had crushed him before they bought his hands they would have had no need to datamine in the first place. The fact that they needed that to clean him out is a sterling argument that datamining is an unfair advantage.

Back to the original point though. You have thus far failed to address the bigger issue of breaking the sites own rules. Obviously full tilt feels that datamining is a big enough deal to ban it in the user agreement. Are you really ok with a site ignoring their own rules even when someone admits to breaking them? If you are ok with them breaking these rules are you ok with superusers? All they really have done is break the user agreement.

LizaMayra said:

but I guess it was all a big publicity stunt for PokerStars... to bust up their name...

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I kinda agree on this somewhat... Pokerstars will sign anyone to there site if you win big. They don't care who you are if you bring a big draw to there site they will sign you in a min. if you can get the buzz going. Everyone is saying that full tilt made a big mistake not signing him, I say full tilt made the right move.

Six Hurdles said:

Back to the original point though. You have thus far failed to address the bigger issue of breaking the sites own rules. Obviously full tilt feels that datamining is a big enough deal to ban it in the user agreement. Are you really ok with a site ignoring their own rules even when someone admits to breaking them? If you are ok with them breaking these rules are you ok with superusers? All they really have done is break the user agreement.

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FTP does practically nothing to people who buy hands. The fact is, it is against the toc but they dont care. Yes it is against the TOS but ftp doesnt do anything to stop it or do they really punish anybody. Its like comparing stealing a stick of gum to murder, dont be that guy. Im done with this thread.

I liked watching him on the nosebleeds. Sad to see that he went to stars who dont really have a big selection of nosebleed players.

Fair enough. I agree it an extreme, and not equitable, comparison. I'm not trying to be contrary, I simply truly do not understand how it isn't considered cheating to use tools banned by the site. Especially if you are payed by the site. Thank you for the discussion, it made me think.

the lab man said:

If they sign Hellmouth ....which is where i think he's going then they may have signed a star.

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Doubtful - Hellmuth doesn't like to share the spotlight and he'd have to compete for it with the likes of Negreanu, Greenstein, Moneymaker and loads of others (such as Blom) if he signed to Stars. Plus he probably doesn't fit the overall Stars image.

Six Hurdles said:

Fair enough. I agree it an extreme, and not equitable, comparison. I'm not trying to be contrary, I simply truly do not understand how it isn't considered cheating to use tools banned by the site. Especially if you are payed by the site. Thank you for the discussion, it made me think.

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Six, (not trying to get in the middle of this debate) try to think of it like card counting at blackjack. It is not illegal or actually cheating but the casinos will bar you if they catch you.