Today is a good day. Not only am I not hungover anymore (thank what ever deity you worship), but if you are an Isildur1 fan, there are some really encouraging signs, but more of those later on.
Victor Blom put in another big session yesterday with 2696 hands played, and about 10 hours at the grindstone. Over the past week or so, Viktor has been putting in significant volume, and while I’ve been happy to see the work ethic, I’m been a little dubious about his game selection and Tilt control. If I was an investor in Viktor’s poker enterprise, I’d have been willing him to turn off the poker client on several occasions.
All of Blom’s action yesterday was at the FLO8 tables. This actually makes me very happy, as I’ve been saying for a while that Viktor needs to concentrate on a single game at a time in order to play as well as he can. He started off at the 6–Max tables, and put most of his volume in at these tables all day. These sessions also included some heads up action against Kyle “KPR16” Ray at the 6-Max tables. Viktor earned a profit of $130,168 at the 6-Max tables for the day. We have some of the highlights in the video below:
Blom also played 2 heads up FLO8 sessions, the first of which was against “KPR16.” I’m not sure what happened during the time Viktor was away from the tables, but he seems to have had a breakthrough about playing Kyle, as he added an extra $19,993 to the money he took from him at the 6-Max tables. It looks like “KPR16” backed out of the session after 27 hands, probably because he felt the edge he’d had over previous matchups just wasn’t there anymore.
“KPR16” was the biggest loser of the day, dropping $391,048, and a big portion of that went into Viktor’s Balance. We didn’t manage to grab any of the action between these two at the heads up table, so we don’t have a video for you here.
Viktor’s other heads up matchup for the day was against Kyle “cottonseed1” Hendon, and this one was a much longer affair, running to 589 hands over three and a half hours. Cotton had been winning at the 6-Max tables, but lost $118,022 to Viktor, which gave him an almost breakeven day. The video below has some of the juiciest hands:
From the action we caught, it looks like Viktor may have cracked the Rosetta Stone that has unlocked Kyle Ray’s FLO8 game. That makes 2 (arguably 3 with “cottonseed1”) of the best FLO8 players in the world that Viktor seems to have an edge on. Most commentators were considering Viktor a Fish at the FLO8 tables at the beginning of the year (myself included), and questioning his strategy of playing the best players in the world at the highest stakes. It seems that, once again, Viktor Blom has adapted and confounded both players and the rail alike, and developed a world class game in less time than it takes most people to learn to drive.
He ended the day with a $268,184 profit, giving him a profit on the year in the region of $3.55Million, and he’s back on top of the leader board for the year.
I’m still expecting a continual increase in these numbers, until we see his opponents either start ducking Viktor, or adapt to his new tactics.
If you want to try and test your strategy against the experts, in the style of Isildur1, Full Tilt are offering you the chance. The “Challenge Table” promotion is still running, and all you need is a Full Tilt account, and the cojones to step up to Viktor Blom or Gus Hansen. You can download the client here, and take advantage of FTR’s exclusive version of the Welcome Bonus.