Want to know how Viktor “Isildur1” Blom won $1,703,125 from Ben “Bttech86” Tollerene in just six hours? Just read on to learn all the details concerning a crazy week of poker on the virtual felt.
There wasn’t much to write about in last week’s Online Railbird Report as the high-stakes action on both Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars had slowed to a crawl. That wasn’t the case this week, though. Now that the Full Tilt Online Poker Series (FTOPS) XXIIwas in the books, the big-name pros returned to nosebleeds.
After losing $661,949 and finishing as last week’s biggest loser, Blom stormed back this week and finished as the biggest winner with $691,889 in profit. Blom was down over a million at one point, but thanks to an incredible heater on Wednesday night when he took an astounding $1,703,125 from Ben “Bttech86” Tollerene in just six hours, he was able to vault to the top of the leader board. We describe that match in more details below, but needless to say, Tollerene finished as the week’s biggest loser with $1,161,659 in losses.
Although Blom, who got his profit in 8,674 hands over 81 sessions, dominated the headlines, there were still plenty of other big winners this week including Patrik “FinddaGrind” Antonius (+$514,476 in 22 sessions/1,522 hands), Kyle “KPR16” Ray (+$342,961 in 26 sessions/3,046 hands) and “Follow The Hawk” (+$303,967 in 13 sessions/1,507 hands).
On the flip side, Gus Hansen (-$985,889 in 57 sessions/6,325 hands), “samrostan” (-$383,046 in 15 sessions/1,949 hands), “kagome kagome” (-$171,269 in 11 sessions/943 hands) and Sebastien “Seb86” Sabic (-$103,066 in 15 sessions/1,533 hands) all found their names in the loser column alongside Tollerene.
Wild Sunday Action on Full Tilt Poker
There was plenty of action to be had on Full Tilt Poker on Sunday as some of online poker’s biggest names came out to play. Kyle “KPR16” Ray kicked off things off in a big way by winning $350,000 playing fixed-limit Omaha Hi-Lo in the early morning hours, and he ended up adding another $100,600 to that by day’s end. All told, Ray banked $450,600 and finished as the day’s biggest winner.
The day’s biggest loser? That would be FTP Professional Gus Hansen, who lost a total of $716,000 playing FLO8 and 2-7 triple draw. Speaking of the latter game, “Follow The Hawk” cleaned up at the 2-7 triple draw games to the tune of $282,600, but it was only good for fourth on the leaderboard as both Ben “Bttech86” Tollerene and Alexander “PostFlopAction” Kostritsyn won $353,300 and $331,900, respectively.
Kostritsyn got most of his money from Hansen in the FLO8 and 2-7 triple draw came, while Tollerene’s came from Viktor “Isildur1” Blom, who dropped $448,000 in the match. Tollerene and Blom played a two-and-a-half hour match at the $500/$1,000 CAP pot-limit Omaha tables and accounted for nearly 120 maxed-out pots of $80,000. Here are a couple examples from the match.
Hand #1: Blom ($40,000) opened for $3,000 and then called when Tollerene ($114,999.50) three-bet to $9,000, bringing about a flop of 10♥3♦5♣. Tollerene led out for $18,000 and then called when Blom moved all in for $31,000.
Blom: 10♣8♣8♦4♦
Tollerene: A♠A♥Q♠7♠
Blom had flopped top pair, but it was behind the aces of Tollerene. Neither the 2♦ turn nor 3♥ river changed a thing and Tollerene was pushed the $80,000 pot.
Hand #2: Blom ($40,000) opened for $3,000, Tollerene ($100,000) called, and the flop fell 5♣J♣6♥. Tollerene checked, Blom bet $4,000, and Tollerene woke up with a check-raise to $18,000. Blom then moved all in for $37,000 total and Tollerene called.
Blom: 6♠6♣Q♦8♦
Tollerene: 5♥3♥4♦7♣
Blom got it in good with middle set, but he needed to sweat Tollerene’s wrap. The 4♣ turn gave Tollerene the said straight, which meant Blom needed either a seven or the board to pair on the river to win the pot. Unfortunately for him, the 8♠ blanked and Tollerene took down another $80,000 pot.
Tollerene may have dismantled Blom, but the Swede would return the favor five fold later in the week (which you can read about below). It’s also worth noting that Kyle “cottonseed1” Hendon and Phil “Polarizing” Ivey finished as six-figure winners on Sunday, profiting approximately $110,000 each.
Polk Finishes as PokerStars’ Biggest Winner
On Monday, April 1, Doug “WCG|Rider” Polk took on Ben “Sauce123” Sulsky at four tables of $100/$200 no-limit hold’em. After two hours, Sulsky walked away a $197,000 win and avenged his $211,000 loss to Polk a week earlier. The biggest pot from that match was $60,394, and surprisingly it went to Polk.
