I’m starting to despair about my mate, Viktor Blom. He goes on some amazing heaters, wins lots of money, and then tilts it all away again by playing games he should know he’s likely to lose in. It just feels that he’s going crazy. I’ve spent the past 30 minutes listening to The Beatles “Helter Skelter” on a loop to try and get into the same head space. The only thing that’s happened so far is I have a headache and these lyrics stuck in my head:
“When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide
Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride
Till I get to the bottom and I see you again.”
Yesterday was not a good day for Viktor. After winning $502,622 on Saturday (covered by Filik for the Watch), and he was back at the tables hoping for more of the same.
His first stop was the 2-7TD nosebleed tables, and he ended up playing Niki Jedlicka, an Austrian professional, who’s been around the high stakes game for a decent amount of time. the two players faced off over a pair of $1.5k/$3k heads up tables, and 230 hands later, Niki left, taking $138,730 of Viktor’s money with him. Some of the hands from this battle have made it into our 2-7TD highlight’s package below.
Viktor kept going with 2-7Td through most of the day, and had some sucess, at both the 6-Max tables, and heads up against Isildur1 Watch regular “PostflopAction.” The two faced off for 184 hands towards the end of the day. Blom managed to earn $84,719 from his regular nemesis, and in total, 2-7TD only cost Viktor $6,023 for the day. the highlights are in the video below:
Viktor also played at the $2k/$4k 6-Max FLHE tables yesterday, and played out 753 hands over 3 sessions. The 1st two of these cost Viktor dearly. In the first Viktor lost $147,980, and $57,104 in the second, with the third only being a small consolation with Viktor winning back $69.990. In total, playing FLHE cost Viktor $135,094, and at this point, the day was not looking good.
Then Viktor sat at a single FLO8 6-Max table, at $2k/$4k, and over 88 hands, Viktor turned his day around. When he left “El Castano” he was only down $59,854 over the day.
FLO8 then turned and bit Viktor right in the A$$. He sat down with “Cottonseed1” across a bunch of heads up tables, and played 184 hands against the Canadian. The results were disastrous, as Viktor lost $607,847, wiping out the small profit he had earned over the day and against “PostflopAction.” We have some of the hands in the video below:
Viktor ended the day dropping more than he won the day before, and $582,982 left his online account, which takes his yearly profits to $2,623,106, which means I’m not going to be giving my change to a shaggy Viktor Blom in the streets anytime soon.
I’m really not sure what’s going in with Viktor these days. He seems to consider losing a personal affront, and refuses to walk away until he has been crushed, or got back to at least even. He seems to be like a honour bound Samurai, trying to wipe out the shame of losing, and he doesn’t care the cost to achieve his aim.
While this attitude makes for some damn fine Japanese films, it’s not going to be a winning strategy at the high stakes poker tables (unless the shame focuses the mind into a razor sharp weapon, but Viktor doesn’t seem to be made that way), as your opponents will take any emotion you play with, and turn it against you. If you play too passively, because you don’t want to lose any more, they’ll pile on the pressure with aggression. Alternatively, if you ‘re too aggressive, they’ll sit back, and take you to value town with their decent hands.
The second one of these seems to be what’s happening with Viktor at the moment. Viktor’s aggression is being turned against him in certain spots.
He really needs to be willing to lose a session, and walk away from a player who is beating him, rather than continuing to pay off like a broken ATM.
I’m going to read up onthe lyrics from “Helter Skelter” going round my head. I’m sure nothing bad has ever been done and blamed on them. Really. I’m also going to be watching the EPT Live stream from Berlin, and FTR also has the #EPTLive feed from twitter as well.
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