Viktor Blom is still not in the US. I only know this because he was playing poker on Full Tilt yesterday. That an I have a GPS tracker embedded into his brain. Viktor does seem to be concentrating on playing online while a lot of his top class opponents have taken a summer vacation in the NevadaDesert. It’s actually a very strong tactic, as long as Viktor makes a profit while playing some of the “lesser” players. Thing is, at the levels Viktor tends to play, not many of the “lesser” players are really considerably worse that the top class players.
Viktor’s day started at a single $500/$1000 $30k Cap NLHE table against “riyyc225.” We missed the 42 hand session, but Viktor did manage to come out $163,992 ahead of his opponent, so must have been running rather well over such a small sample.
Next up was the growing action of $200/$400 $16k Cap PLO, where Viktor spent most of his day playing. Over 1055 hands, Blom ground out the PLO tables. We have been able to split the PLO action into 3 sessions, the first of which was a mere 60 hands. Viktor went down $46,613 in this session, but the second session was the one that really hurt. It lasted 479 hands, and all four tables went against Viktor to end up with him losing $128,869. The last session was the largest, 516 hands, but only saw Viktor lose $48,438. We have some of the action from these PLO tables in the video below:
In the middle of all this PLO action, Viktor stopped and played against Watch regular, “SallyWoo” at an FLO8 table at the nosebleed limits of $2k/$4k. With their long time competitive relationship, these players know each other pretty well, but this session won’t be going down as one of the classics. It lasted a short 51 hands, and cost Viktor $76,806. We have some of the action from this short battle in the video below.
With a short 30 hand 2-7TD session costing Viktor $39,969, his day came to an end with a $176,703 loss, taking his yearly cash game profit line to $3,109,891.
Yesterday was not a red letter day for Viktor Blom, but the results aren’t that horrific. My only concerns are that it looks a little like a spiral, just without the crippling losses. The continual losses over the day seem to indicate that Viktor wasn’t playing at his best, or running worse than a dog with no legs. In either case, Viktor’s PLO volume during the day, all the while losing money may be a case of Viktor following my advice, and just falling off the line. There is a fine line between getting enough volume in a certain game for variance to be a lesser factor, and playing a losing game for too long so you lose too much money. I’d say Viktor may have played a couple of hundred hands of PLO too many, but if I’m honest, it’s a minor mistake compared with some of the spirals I’ve seen Viktor on. As I type this, He’s back at the tables, giving me more to write about tomorrow.
