Viktor ‘Isildur1’ Blom and Daniel ‘W00kiez’ Cates, also known as Jungleman, will face each other this Sunday in round three of the PokerStars SuperStar Showdown 2500 hands heads up match. The match begins Sunday at 5:30PM ET.
This will be the third iteration of the SuperStar Showdown. Round 1 saw Isildur lose vs Ike Haxton to the tune of $40,000. In SuperStar Showdown number 2, Isildur beat Tony G in a close match to win by a margin of $44,000.
The match will consist of 2500 hands of 50/100 Heads Up No-Limit. Both players will come into the match with a $150,000 bankroll. Whichever player is winning at the end of the 2500 hands will be deemed the victor.
Expect the gloves to come off as two of the hottest names in poker right now are fighting for the right to claim themselves the greatest heads up No-Limit player in the world. There is a fair amount of history between Viktor Blom and Daniel Cates. They have played approximately 13,000 hands against each other with Isildur being up overall a couple hundred thousand, but that was from nosebleed stakes a couple years ago. Both of their games have changed a great deal since then and it could be argued that Cates has gotten the best of Isildur in their most recent encounters on Pokerstars.
One thing Viktor “Isildur1” Blom and Cates have in common is that they both partially made their names in the poker world by being a thorn in the side of the poker prodigy Tom Durrrr Dwan. Isildur went on a $5 Million heater versus Tom Dwan a few years ago on Full Tilt while Cates proved he’s one of the top NLHE Heads Up players in the world this year by doing well so far in Durrr’s Full Tilt Heads Up Challenge with a $819,000 lead over Durrrr. So far Durrrr and Cates have played over 17,000 hands with 33,000 hands to go.
Only a few months have gone by since Isildur1 announced joining Team PokerStars, and it’s been only a few weeks since he revealed his real life identity as Viktor Blom. So far it’s been somewhat rocky for the young Swede. A $300,000 heater to start his tenure at Stars, followed by an equally large $300,000 downswing playing Phil Galfond Heads Up. In SuperStars Showdowns Isildur1 is 1-1 with a loss to Ike and a recent win over Tony G. 2500 hands of poker is not much. Normally it would take tens of thousands of hands to determine who is the better of two poker players, if not more, to cancel out the variance. Nevertheless, if he can pull it off, this could be a huge win for Isildur.