Viktor Blom, it appears, has rediscovered his love of playing long sessions, across multiple games, and multiple different opponents. 1995 hands, across just over 8 hours with no real breaks. The real shame for Viktor is that he didn’t rediscover his ability to win massive sums of money.
Apart from the odd positive blip, he has been consistently losing since the 14th of January, busting out of the NBC heads Up Championship, and has been playing high stakes Chinese Poker at levels that are on par with the Capitol of Gambol, Macau.
We don’t have any hands as lost all the data with today’s Full Tilt Server reset, but we’ll try and fill in as many gaps as we can.
Viktor’s day started across 3 $200/$400 PLO tables, sat across from “Sauce1234”. From other reports, it seemed Sauce wanted to go for 4 tables, but Blom decided to keep it at just 3.
With 2 of the tables in this session going Viktor’s way, he started off the day with a $70k profit. Unfortunately for Blom, this didn’t last long, and with Viktor mixing PLO and 2-7TD, the loses began.
With 2 new tables against Sauce, Viktor proceeded to drop over $178k to the PLO specialist over 213 hands.
At the same time he was playing “PostflopAction” at a $1.5k/$3k 2-7TD table, and while he managed to take $99,724 from the high stake regular, his day had turned into a negative one.
Once “PostflopAction” had decided to call it a day, and while still playing “Sauce1234”, Viktor jumped into a $2k/$4k FLO8 match against “KPR16”. The hour long matchup went in Blom’s direction, to the tune of $145,965. You would have thought that was good news, but during the last 17 minutes of this session, Viktor had switched from playing PLO against Sauce, and was now playing $1.5k/$3k 2-7TD against “Alexonmoon”, and the Frenchman all but wiped out that win with a 44 hand session taking $133k from Isildur’s stack.
With these 2 session coming to a close, Viktor was straight back into action in both 2-7TD and FLO8.
“Seb86” was seated opposite our Swedish hero at the lowball game. 96 hands and 43 minutes later, he was $77,462 richer.
Meanwhile, at the Hi/Lo table, Viktor managed to eek out a small profit of $13,978 against “cottonseed1.”
With these session finishing almost simultaneously, Blom was straight back to splitting his attention across these 2 games. With a KPR re-match at FLO8 earning Blom a nearly $30k profit, and a longer 228 hand 2-7TD session against Seb earning him just under $12k, Blom could have been forgiven for thinking he was due an upswing.
That didn’t take into consideration the PLO session that coincided with the middle of his session against Seb. Sat at a pair of $200/$400 6 max tables, with opponents including Phil Ivey, Blom’s bankroll was lightened by a shade under $41k.
Viktor Blom is a man who obviously doesn’t like to be bored, because even losing the amounts of money he already had, when he left the PLO games, and with his 2-7TD game still running with “Seb86”, he jumped into another FLO8 game. The villain? Phil Ivey. They battle against each other for 12 minutes, and Viktor won about $40k. Ivey was then replaced by “SallyWoo” who then battled Viktor for 56 hands, and left with a $5,564 profit.
Blom then dropped down to 1 table, again playing “Alexonmoon” at 2-7TD, but that didn’t last very long. 10 minutes into this session, he added a $2k/$k FLO* table against Phil Ivey’s “Polarizing” handle.
The 2-7TD session didn’t go in Viktor’s favour, and he dropped another $50k. I have heard a rumour that “Seb86” and Alex live together inLondon, and while I’m not suggesting anything nefarious, they appear to have developed a strategy that allows them to consistently beat Isildur.
With the Blom/Ivey FLO8 matchup going for 230 hands, over nearly 2 hours, Blom wasn’t able to stay at 1 table to play the man considered by many to be the best all-round poker player ever. During the 2nd half of his match against Ivey, he opened up a 6-Max $200/$400 PLO table, a $2k/$4k FLO8 table against “kipu”, AND a $1.5k/$3k 2-7TF table against “xTCBx”.
The PLO session lasted 20 hands, and won Viktor $17,132, the FLO8 table won Mr Blom $81,990, and the 2-7TD session cost him $115,622. These session, combined with the $14,925 profit from the Ivey FLO8 session, gave Viktor a $1,575 loss.
Viktor’s last session was again split over FLO8 and 2-7TD at least at the start. Blom was up against Ruo Cao, but the session only lasted 7 hands, possibly because Viktor lost nearly $50k in that short time.
The FLO8 session, again at the highest Full Tilt offer ($2k/$4k), was a ring table, with Phil Ivey, “patpatpanda.” Viktor ended up Dropping another $40k here, and that ended his day at the tables.
Viktor ended the day continuing his downswing with another $198,324 going into the losing column. However, please don’t go reaching for the tissues just yet, Blom is still a massive winner on the year, and is currently up in the region of $1.5 Million since the beginning of 2013.
Blom was also seen last night at the Full Tilt Poker Challenge Tables, playing at micro levels to allow us mere mortals to have a shot at him. You can join in by downloading the Full Tilt Poker client, and jump into the action.