Whilst most of the online poker world was debating the repercussions of “Black Friday” Viktor “Isildur1” Blom was busy doing what he does best, winning pot after pot at heads-up poker.
Although Blom’s sponsor, PokerStars, is one of the sites under the spotlight with the recent indictments from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the American Department of Justice they wanted to show it was business as usual for players from the rest of the world and continued with Blom’s “SuperStar Showdown” challenge. In this challenge Blom takes on all comers at either heads-up no limit Hold’em or pot limit Omaha over the course of 2,500 hands.
In recent weeks he has taken on and beaten some of the biggest names in the business, including Tony G, Daniel Cates, Eugene Katchalov and Daniel Negreanu. However, this week’s challenger was completely unknown, a player going under the name of “Mastermixus,” an player who won his seat in this match in a satellite tournament. Usually the challenge is played with blinds of $50/$100 and both players sit down with $100,000 available but as this player was a qualifier the blinds were reduced to $5/$10 and each player had $15,000 as a bankroll.
Only ten minutes into the match and the rank amateur drew the first blood. On a board reading 9h-3s-2c-Td Blom check-raised Mastermixus’ $80 to $265, a bet that was flat-called. The river was the 5s saw Blom’s trademark over-bet shove come into play with the Swede betting $995 into the $630 but it went horribly wrong for him as his opponent insta-called and turned over Ts9c for two pair, much better than the KhQs (king-high) he held.
Almost straight away Blom won back this money, his AhAd prevailing against the JcJh of the online qualifier with the money going in preflop, but he lost it all back when they were again all in preflop, Blom with AhKs against the AdJs of Mastermixus, the latter flopping a jack, turning an ace and rivering a boat! Must be nice!
Later in the match that AhAd hand turned up again, this time in the hands of Mastermixus who wasted no time getting all in on a 8h-5c-4h flop against Blom’s 8s7s and it looked as if another double up was on the cards as the turn was the 4d but the 8c on the river gave Blom trip eights and the sizeable stack was added to his stack. Almost right after they were all in again on the same table, Blom holding 3c2c against the KsQd of Mastermixus on a Kc-Qc-4c-9s board but no miracle river and Mastermixus was well and truly on the ropes.
Amazingly, Mastermixus did manage to fight back but with only a couple of hundred hands to go he quite literally shut up shop and played extremely passively, allowing Blom to win 21 straight pots at one stage. By the time the 2,500 hands had been played Blom lead by $1,279, meaning he now has a 7-2 record in the SuperStar Showdown and has won $351,486 from those nine matches. All was not lost for Mastermixus though as he was allowed to keep the rest of the money in his stack so he actually made $13,721 for just over three hours work. Not a bad job if you can get it!
