Nov
27
by Chad Holloway
"Isildur1" is on a quest to beat some of the best online poker players on the planet.
Now I am a fan of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and can appreciate the reference to the one-time holder of the ring, but I’m afraid that name is soon going to become synonymous with high-stakes online poker action. For those of you who don’t know, “Isildur1” is the screenname of a mysterious player from Sweden who has been playing some nosebleed stakes over at Full Tilt. In the past few weeks he has logged heads-up sessions against the likes of Tom “Durrrr” Dwan, Phil Ivey, Patrik Antonius, Cole South, Illari “Ziigmund” Sahamies, David Benyamine and Brian Townsend. Nothing too special about that, right? True. But the stakes and the amount of money changing hands is simply astounding.
Most of the matches have been played at the $500-$1,000 No Limit Hold’em and Pot Limit Omaha tables, with millions of dollars changing hands. “Isildur1” recently took Tom “durrrr” Dwan for $3 million while booking other wins against Antonius and Sahamies. These sessions put “Isildur1” up more than $6 million in the month of November; however, that didn’t last long. Antonius and Ivey ended up multi-tabling “Isildur1” later in the week and things did not go smoothly; in fact, after playing nearly 4,500 hands in about nine hours, he was down $3.3 million and decided to call it quits (Ivey was up $1.2 million while Antonius got $2.1 million). One of those hands ended up being the largest pot in online poker history worth $1,356,946.50. Needless to say, Antonius took it down. The hand developed when “Isildur1” raised to $3,000 in PLO, Antonius reraised to $9,000, “Isildur1” 4-bet to $27,000, and Antonius 5-bet to $81,000. There was a call and the flop fell 5c 4s 2h, leading Antonius to bet $91,000. “Isildur1” raised and was reraised to get all of the money in. Antonius was ahead with Ah 3s Ks Kh for a flopped wheel while “Isildur1” had massive draws with 6d 7d 8h 9s. The turn came 5h and river the 9c and Antonius made online poker history.
The action continued over the next few days with “Isildur1” dropping in profits to as low as $750,000, at least according to some estimates. He notched some wins after that bringing his total profit over the past five weeks to $2.5 million. These million dollar swings are truly historic in online poker history. It’s going to be interesting to see how things pan out, because “Isildur1” isn’t backing down. He is still playing on a daily basis and taking on anyone willing and able. One thing is for sure, it’d be nice to answer the question: Who is this mystery Swede? Other than that, I’d like to see “Isildur1” pay a visit to Unabomber Poker, fire up the $500-$1,000 tables, and take on Phil “The Unabomber” Laak. If nothing else, that match would be highly entertaining. We’ve all watched Phil on High Stakes Poker, so we know he’s got the high stakes skills. I plan on keeping my eye on the “Isildur1” saga and I’ll be sure to write on any significant action, so check the blog on a regular basis for any updates.