Viktor Blom

Isildur1 first appeared at Full Tilt Poker on 16 September 2009, and remained largely unnoticed until November, when he began playing well-known professionals such as Tom Dwan, Phil Ivey, Brian Townsend, Cole South, and Patrik Antonius at stakes as high as $500/$1000.[4] He reached a career peak on 15 November with total winnings of $5.98 million.[8] By mid December, however, he was down $2 million net,[8] including an approximately $4 million loss to Brian Hastings on 8 December, when the two played heads-up $500/$1,000 pot-limit Omaha for five hours.[9] With a few brief exceptions, Isildur1 did not play on Full Tilt Poker between his collapse in mid-December and his return in February 2010.[8]

According to Full Tilt Poker's insider interview with Patrik Antonius, Isildur1 had a bankroll of approximately $2000 in autumn of 2008. He built his bankroll to $1.4 million and began playing on Full Tilt Poker in September. He first played Haseeb Qureshi, a high-stakes regular, at the $100/$200 stakes. After 24 hours, Isildur1 had won almost $500,000. He then resurfaced a month later and played Brian Townsend, Patrik Antonius, and Cole South at the $200/$400 to $500/$1000 tables and suffered a million dollar loss. A columnist on HighStakesDB, a website that monitors and tracks high-stakes activity online, suggested that Isildur1 was overly aggressive, which could cost him against elite competition. Isildur1, however, answered critics by winning approximately $2 million back from Townsend and South during the last week of October 2009.

With a profit of $1 million on Full Tilt Poker, Isildur1 waited at six heads-up $500/$1000 No Limit Hold'em tables for any challenger willing to play for such stakes. His first opponent was Tom Dwan, who was then widely regarded as one of the top online heads-up players. They played six tables simultaneously, with over a million dollars in play for one week. By the end of the week, Isildur1 had gone on the largest run in the history of online poker, winning approximately $4 million from Dwan, prompting Dwan to issue a live challenge to play Isildur1 at the Full Tilt Poker Durrrr Million Dollar Challenge.[10] He then challenged Antonius to a rematch the following day and won $1.6 million from him on 15 November and peaked with $5.98 million in earnings on Full Tilt Poker.

Isildur1 challenged Phil Ivey, widely regarded as one of the best all-round players in the world, to play three tables of heads-up no-limit hold’em at $500/$1000 stakes. After a week of play, Isildur1 had lost $3.2 million and stated in a subsequent interview that Ivey was the toughest opponent he had ever played.

Antonius then challenged Isildur1 to a rematch in Omaha, a game in which Isildur1 admitted he lacked experience. Isildur1 lost $3 million to Antonius after playing for only one day, which at the time, was the largest single-day gain and loss in the history of online poker. This record was broken a month later when Isildur1 played Brian Hastings. The following day, they played a rematch in Omaha, where Isildur1 won $2 million back from Antonius.

His winnings hovered at the $2 million mark until 8 December 2009, when he played Brian Hastings for five hours. Hastings won $4.2 million from Isildur1, making it the largest gain and loss in a single day in the history of online poker to date.[11]

It was discovered afterward that Hastings, Townsend, and South had shared information about Isildur1's play over 30,000 hands. They engaged in activity which Full Tilt Poker defined as "accessing or compiling information on other players beyond that which the user has personally observed through his or her own game play", after Townsend admitted to acquiring hands of Isildur1's play through Hastings, which he spoke of during an interview with ESPN.[12][13] As a result, Townsend lost some of his privileges as a sponsored Full Tilt Poker player (his "red pro status") for 30 days. Blom's play on Full Tilt Poker between September 2009 and October 2010 at stakes of 50/100 and above resulted in a loss of $2,630,230.[14]

In December 2010, he partnered with online poker site PokerStars and launched a four-table of heads-up cash game no-limit hold'em and pot limit omaha "Superstar Showdown" challenge to anyone who is willing to play at stakes no lower than $50/$100 for 2,500 hands, similar to Dwan's Durrrr Million Dollar Challenge. In March 2012, he defeated Isaac Haxton in a $1 million $200/$400 heads up challenge, winning $500,000.[15]

On 7 May 2012, Blom won the SCOOP #2-Med No-Limit Hold 'em tournament and $247,200 in prize money.[16] The very next day, Blom won the SCOOP #3-High No-Limit Hold 'em Rebuy event for $160,000. In May 2013, Viktor won the SCOOP Main Event $10,300 buy-in for over $1 million.[17]

In August 2012, it was announced that Blom would no longer be a member of Team Pokerstars Pro.[18]

In 2015 Isildur won $3.5 million on PokerStars’ cash tables, and lost $1.75 million on Full Tilt, putting him at +$1.75 million for the year.

The year 2016 was a year of struggle when Full Tilt closed,[19] and Isildur was down by $735,000. However, he was then seen playing in the WCOOP, finishing 3rd in Event 55 ($530 NLHE), winning $72,861.[20] His absence during several months at the biggest online tables has been widely commented by the community.

In 2017, during the SCOOP Festival on PokerStars, Isildur1 played most of the events of the series. In the Player of the Series Race (Overall leaderboard), Isildur1 accumulated 785 points, taking the runner-up spot, behind Naza114 from Portugal.[21]

Since signing with PokerStars in 2011, Viktor Blom has been paying more attention to live tournaments. His first notable live tournament cash was 16th place at the 2010 WSOPE Main Event for £33,582. In January 2012, at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, he won the first live tournament of his career, the $100,000 Super High Roller event for $1,254,400.[22] In February 2018, Blom won the Partypoker Millions Main Event in Germany, for a cash prize of €850,000.[23]

As of 2020, Blom's live tournament winnings exceed $2,900,000.