Viktor Blom

Viktor Blom (born 26 September 1990) is a Swedish millionaire high-stakes online poker player, best known by the online poker name Isildur1.

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.

His rise to fame drew considerable attention around the poker world in late 2009, when he took part in all ten of the largest pots in online poker history.

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.

He reached a career peak on 15 November with total winnings of $5.98 million.

By mid-December, however, he was down $2 million net, 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.

Isildur1, however, answered critics by winning approximately $2 million back from Townsend and South during the last week of October 2009.

In December 2010, it was announced that then-anonymous Isildur1 had joined Team PokerStars Pro.

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.

Blom's identity was revealed by PokerStars on 8 January 2011, at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure.

Blom parted ways with PokerStars in August 2012 and was quickly signed-up by Full Tilt Poker on 15 October 2012, along with rival high-stakes player Tom Dwan.

Viktor Blom was first introduced to poker by his older brother at 14 years old.

He played no-limit Texas hold'em heads-up for a few days with his brother before teaching a few of his friends.

Viktor and these friends used to play micro stakes, in which he won a bit from his friends.

After a while, more and more of the people Viktor knew at school started to play the game.

They played at breaks during school with buy-ins ranging from $3–$7, during one lunch Viktor recalls that 25 people turned up to play.

Viktor himself ended up winning out of the 25.

After turning 15, Viktor and his brother decided to deposit some money onto an online poker site.

The first game they entered was an MTT in which they finished in fifth place for $300, which was huge for them at the time.

After a few weeks, Viktor's brother decided to set up his own account elsewhere and let Viktor play by himself.

After a few weeks of play, Blom90 was regularly playing at $530 sit n gos.

After a few more months of play, the 15-year-old Viktor Blom had made over $275,000 total at various sites.

He then collected all the money onto one site and took on the higher buy-in cash games and sit n gos.

This resulted in him losing all the money.

He then built up a bankroll and deposited $3,000 onto the same site.

He played high buy-in sit n gos and started to win more and more money.

After taking a small break from poker, Viktor came back strong.

He deposited 10,000 SEK and decided to stick to heads-up no-limit Hold'em.

After just two weeks of play, he went from playing 1/2 SEK to 50/100 SEK.

After Viktor turned 17, he deposited $2,500 on PartyPoker.

He discussed his plans with a friend and off he went.

Two days later, the friend asked him how much he had on PartyPoker, expecting him to say he had busted out or had at most $30,000.

He was wrong.

Blom had actually won over $200,000 in just two days of play.

After another hot streak on iPoker, he won over $1.7 million in two weeks.