Posts Tagged ‘Viktor “Isildur1” Blom’

Dan Cates angry over Viktor Blom’s $100k Debt

Friday, March 21st, 2014

As many poker players know, there’s a lot of borrowing that goes on in the game. And high stakes online poker pros are certainly no stranger to this, with many of them getting loans from other players so they can keep grinding in the nosebleeds. Of course, when these loans aren’t paid back, things definitely get testy.

Such was the case recently with Dan “Jungleman12” Cates and Viktor “Isildur1” Blom. Apparently, Blom owes Cates $100,000 and is being slow to pay the amount back. The two got into a heated exchange, and here’s a chat log of their conversation, thanks to HighStakesDB:

jungleman12: i cant describe how annoying it is to lose tyou viktor
Isildur1: 2 pair
Isildur1: biatch
jungleman12: scum
Isildur1: too easy
Isildur1: eat this
Isildur1: ty
Isildur1: u suck
Isildur1: easy money
Isildur1: gus on the other hand
jungleman12: pay your debt scumbag

CardPlayer asked Jungleman to expand on this exchange. “Well, I was kind of tilted at the point,” Cates said. “It’s not really a secret that he owes me some money. He owes me like a little over $100,000, but he’s been making some small payments here and there. He’s going to give it back to me, it seems, but it’s taking some time and it’s a little frustrating. He has borrowed money before on multiple occasions and paid back for those.”

Jungleman also went on to explain why he thinks that the Swede has been so slow to pay him back. “Well, he owes other people money as well. He owed me money first.” Cates added. “I stopped loaning him money or whatever…Yeah, it is a complicated situation.”

One more interesting point that Cates covered involves Blom implying that he is somehow better than Jungleman at poker. “It’s possible he thinks he is better than me, and probably at some things, sure,” Cates explained. “He might have been better at no-limit at certain points in time, but he’s not a better gambler than me, at all. He’s probably not a better overall player, either. I don’t think he can make that claim…He has been dodging me at no-limit over the past year and a half.”

If there’s one nice thing about this story, it’s that Isildur1 and Cates made up after their heated argument. Jungleman believes that Blom was probably drunk when they played and spouted off a little too much.

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Niklas Heinecker passes $4m in 2013 Online Poker Winnings

Saturday, November 16th, 2013

Throughout 2013, most of the attention in the high stakes poker world has been on Viktor “Isidur1” Blom. After all, the Swede has made over $4.5 million playing online this year.

But one player who’s had an exceptional year, yet has flown under the radar a bit, is Niklas “ragen70” Heinecker. The German recently won over $400,000 this past week, which puts him at a $4.2 million profit in 2013.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Heinecker’s massive winnings is that they’ve come within the last three months. He was actually down money in the middle of August, but has since burst out of the hole and into some huge profits.

One event that’s really fueled Heinecker’s big win streak was when he took down a $403,000 pot back in August. The German flopped a straight against “MalACEsia” and five-bet shoved; MalACEsia called while chasing an ace-high flush and the race was on. MalACEsia wasn’t able to complete the flush, though, which sealed the huge pot for Heinecker.

Online poker isn’t the only arena where Niklas is excelling. He won the GuangDong HK$1 million Asia Millions in June and earned a massive HK$34,600,000 ($4,456,885) prize. He beat out a very tough final table which included Sorel Mizzi, Isaac Haxton and Igor Kurganov.

Considering the fact that Heinecker is only in his mid-20’s, he certainly looks to be a strong high stakes player for years to come. But for now, he’ll certainly be focused on the current situation where he’s trying to continue earning millions of dollars online.

2013 is close to being over with, so it’ll be interesting to see who finishes with the most money – Blom or Heinecker. Furthermore, it will be fun to watch how both of these players perform next year.

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Viktor “Isildur1” Blom dominating Online Poker

Monday, January 7th, 2013

When Viktor “Isildur1” Blom first hit the online poker scene in 2009, his hyper-aggressive style and fearlessness baffled opponents. He was taking on the world’s top poker players just months after moving into high stakes games – and he was winning too!

Unfortunately, Blom ran into a red-hot Brian Hastings, who was armed with ill-gotten hand histories on Isildur1’s play. Hastings’ massive EV spike coupled with the hand histories helped him win $4 million off of Blom in a single session. Since that time, the Swede’s profits have spiraled downward at both Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars. That spiral continued into this past November, when his career Full Tilt losses hit $2.97 million.

But it seems as if a cloud has been lifted because all of the sudden, Viktor Blom is dominating the online poker world. And when we say dominating, we’re not just talking about a few hundred thousands dollars in a week; instead, we’re alluding to the fact that he’s won almost $2.5 million in the past week alone!

Thanks to the $344k profit that he hauled in last night, Blom has earned $3.1 million since early December. What’s more is that this $3.1 million amount has easily made him the biggest winner in the “new” Full Tilt Poker’s history.

Blom is still only up $222k for his entire career at FTP, which dates back to 2009. As mentioned before, he was quite a bit in the hole after the $4 million losing session to Hastings. And he’s never really battled out of the red – until now that is. Seeing as how he is now pulling a profit, it’ll be interesting to see what Blom does from here. The 22-year-old is much younger than most high stakes poker pros and could really take over the game as time moves on.

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Sweden’s Tax Authority cracking down on Poker Pros

Wednesday, November 21st, 2012

Skatteverket, which is Sweden’s tax authority, has suddenly taken a keen interest in their country’s poker players. Going further, the group is demanding that professional grinders pay taxes on money made “outside the European Economic Area” between the years of 2008 and 2011. The beginning of the letter sent to suspected pro players reads as follows:

(We have) obtained information that you have played poker in one or more Internet sites based outside the European Economic Area (EEA) for the period 2008-2011. Please submit bank statements or similar documents from any internet site where you had the bankroll for the period 2008-2011.

The letter eventually names specific sites like Absolute Poker, Full Tilt, Bodog and PokerStars as places where grinders might have played. Furthermore, Skatteverket asks that players reveal their poker room screen names, bank statements, and online banking (Moneybookers, NETeller, PayPal) information so the matter can be investigated more thoroughly.

The back taxes announcement and investigations come on the heels of raids that have been conducted on Swedish poker players’ homes. An unidentified pro player had his laptop taken for evidence and was told that he raised suspicion after online tournament-tracking websites were checked.

As you can see, it’s definitely not good that Skatteverket is monitoring poker players so closely. And what’s particularly bad is that the tax authority isn’t exactly known for dealing with poker taxes in a rational way. They used to judge taxes based on individual hands; however, they’ve since changed this to wins/losses on a per-site basis. But even this isn’t ideal because a grinder could win $30,000 on one site, lose $20,000 on another, and still be paying taxes on the $30k in winnings on the first site.

We hope that Swedish grinders can make it through this tough back taxes debacle without too many headaches.

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Ilari Sahamies dominating High Stakes Poker Again

Tuesday, April 17th, 2012

Ilari Sahamies was the talk of the online poker world last year after collecting over $2.2 million in profits. The Finn dominated the competition at PokerStars, and earned the most money out of any online poker player in 2011.

Unfortunately for Sahamies, the good times came to a screeching halt in 2012 when he got off to a very rocky start. Perhaps the word “rocky” is an understatement because he lost a nightmarish $1 million over the first two months of this year. But in proving how much of a roller coaster ride the high stakes can be, Ilari Sahamies has already turned things around by winning almost all of his losses back.

Much of the winning has occurred over the past few days, where the Finn has accumulated nearly $500k in profits. This helps make up for the poor start he had to April, which cost him around $700k. A large portion of Sahamies great sessions have come at the PokerStars $50/$100 and $100/$200 PLO tables, while facing top-notch competition such as Viktor “Isildur1” Blom, Phil “MrSweets28” Galfond, Ben “Sauce123” Sulsky and Ben “milkybarkid” Grundy.

So with yet another “up” to his up and down sessions lately, it’s nice to see Ilari Sahamies battling back again. But does his great play as of late mean that there’s any chance he could top the online poker world two years in a row?

It appears highly unlikely since another Finn by the name of Jens “Jeans89” Kyllonen seems to be asserting himself atop the cyber poker world this time around. Things haven’t been so good for the 21-year-old lately, but he still has $1.25 million profits thus far, and the year isn’t even halfway over with. This being said, he’s definitely the favorite to top the online poker world in 2012.

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Daniel Negreanu back in Online Poker

Friday, August 26th, 2011

Like many people who live in the United States, Daniel Negreanu has not been able to play online poker at PokerStars. After all, the world’s largest online poker site pulled out of the American market following the US Department of Justice’s crackdown. Fortunately though, Negreanu was only kept out of the online games at PokerStars for a few months since he moved from Las Vegas to Canada.

Negreanu talked about the big move in his blog at FullContactPoker, and he began the post with the following:

It took a couple days, but I successfully set up shop in Toronto so that I can play on PokerStars again. I already had the Canadian passport, but just like everyone else, I needed to attain the necessary documents then wait for the call from PokerStars security to verify the phone number, and voila! I’m back in action! I jumped right into some $25-$50 PLO 6 max deep with ante games, and within 5 hands I lost my first buy in HAHA.

The last well-noted instance of Negreanu playing online poker was when he took on Viktor “Isildur1” Blom in the PokerStars SuperStar Challenge; Kid Poker lost the first matchup after quickly blowing his $150k buy-in, but he came back to win a rematch after finishing with $25k more than Blom.

Getting back to the blog post, Negreanu got a little controversial as he discussed how little freedom the US is giving people by taking away online poker. The Toronto-born player wrote this excerpt about the subject:

During the Cold War, the “Big, Bad, Communist, U.S.S.R.” was seen as an oppressive regime, while the U.S.A. represented freedom. Who woulda thunk, that to enjoy the freedom of playing poker online you’d have to move away from Los Angeles and and head to Moscow. That’s just bizarre.

Poker has changed dramatically over the last 40 years, and in order to survive, you have to adapt to the newer forms of poker, as well as adapt to new locations. These days, that just means, stay away from the U.S. because poker is on life support, but there are tons, and tons, of games across the globe to choose from.

Seeing as how the US is still in the middle of working out possible poker legislation, it seems like Negreanu is making the right move by going to Toronto now.

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