Isildur1 On Another Rollercoaster Ride

This is the fantastic story about a poker player who plays on Full Tilt Poker. Full Tilt is known for its nosebleed cash games. Before the financial crisis, there was a lot of action on the $500/$1000 tables. This meant that a couple of times a day, someone would win a hand worth more than $500k. However, the action slowly died out on the higher levels.

All of a sudden, in November 2009, this kid shows up under the nickname Isildur1. In less than two weeks he wins close to 5 million dollars - 4 of them he won off Tom 'durr' Dwan. The funny thing is that no-one really knows who he is. There are rumors about him being 18 year old Viktor Blom from Sweden but it has never been confirmed. 

After winning 5 million dollars, everybody in the poker community was really amazed by this new player. Unluckily for him, he also tasted what it feels like to be on a loosing streak! In less than 24 hours, one day in December, he lost 4 million dollars to another young gun, Brian Hastings. Throughout December, Isildur1 lost all of his winnings plus another two million dollars! One day he just disappeared. He wasn't seen at the tables in all of January, so everybody thought he would never come back. Below you can see a graph of his results.

Isildur1's Career Timeline

Before Isildur1, the biggest online pot had been $700k for more than a year. During November and December that record got beaten more than ten times! Today, the record for the biggest online pot is 1,3 million dollars, in which Isildur1 was the loser.

So it was a bit of a surprise, when he went back to the tables a few days ago! He started out like in November - he won $900k the first day. But yesterday and today he has lost approx. the same amount. So, I think he is break-even for the year.

But it is going to be very interesting to follow this mystery kid!