The Online Railbird Report: Blom Gets Back on Track; Polk Continues to Dominate Sulsky

Chad Holloway PR & Media Manager

Oct 04, 2013 5 min read Last updated Oct 11, 2013

It’s been an interesting few weeks on the virtual felt. For a long time, the week’s biggest winners and losers were losing upwards of $500,000, and oftentimes more than twice that. Now, things seem to have slowed a bit. That’s not to say there hasn’t been plenty of money exchanging hand – just ask Viktor “Isildur1” Blom, who finally halted his slide and finished as the week’s biggest winner with $418,528 in profit in 11,028 hands over 167 sessions.

While Blom was busy recouping the $165,026 he lost the week before, others were busy adding to their yearly totals including Hac “trex313” Dang ($333,626 in 42 sessions/2,573 hands), Ronny “ronnyr37617” Kaiser ($287,801 in 77 sessions/3,201 hands), and Phil “Polarizing” Ivey (+$266,932 in 48 sessions/3,178 hands). If you recall, Ivey was last week’s biggest winner, and his back-to-back wins suggest he’s on the right track to turning his year around.

Of course not everyone can be a winner. Among those to grace the loser’s list this week were “samrostan” (-$499,427 in 3,664 hands/49 sessions), “RookieNFL” (-$338,764 in 944 hands/6 sessions), “punting-peddler” (-$331,213 in 11 sessions/1,308 hands) and Tom “durrrr” Dwan (-$287,771 in 18 sessions/1,655 hands). Earlier this week we told you about the “Durrrr Challenge II” between Dwan and Daniel “jungleman12” Cates, which is where the former lost most of his money. To read all about that match, click here.

Polk Continues to Dominate Sulsky in Challenge

Two weeks ago the highly publicized heads-up no-limit hold’em challenge on Full Tilt Poker between Doug "WCGRider" Polk and Ben "Sauce1234" Sulsky kicked off.

The Online Railbird Report: Blom Gets Back on Track; Polk Continues to Dominate Sulsky 101 — Polk vs. Sulsky

The challenge will consist of 15,000 hands of $100/$200 NLHE over a number of sessions. Each session will come to a halt if either player builds an effective chip stack of more than 250 big blinds, and the player who is ahead at the time the 15,000th hand is complete will be awarded the $100,000 put up by the losing player. With 61% of the challenge complete, Polk held a healthy $491,000 lead.

That is where things stood on Friday, Sept. 27 when the duo met for the fifth time. Once again Polk bested Sulsky, taking $102,200 from his opponent in seven hours. That put Polk up nearly $591,700 with just 3,600 hands remaining in the challenge.

On Sunday, Sept. 29, the two played for a sixth time, completing 2,158 hands over nine hours (which means the Challenge in 90% complete). It was a back-and-forth match, and by the time it came to an end Polk was a small $4,300 winner.

It seems a forgone conclusion that Polk will win the Challenge given that he is up $596,000 with less than 1,500 hands to go, but it’ll be a few weeks before the final nail is put in the coffin.

Challenge will conclude in a couple weeks, bad scheduling and i am busy up until that point.
— Douglas Polk (@DougPolkPoker)

Blom Begins to Rebuild

On Tuesday, Oct. 1, Viktor “Isildur1” Blom finished as the day’s biggest winner with $280,300 in profit, which was more than five times the next biggest winner. Blom, who had been struggling in September, began by winning a $600 heads-up sit and go, which he parlayed into a $4,444 win at the $100/$200 2-7 triple draw tables against Eugene “fishosaurusREX” Yanayt. From there, he won an additional $6,500 playing pot-limit Omaha before heading to the 8-game table to take on “punting-peddler.”

The two played for six hours and proceeded to run over his opponent. Blom was up $400,000 at one point, but eventually left a $331,000 winner. The two played some big pots, but none bigger than one during $300/$600 PLO. It happened when Blom ($409,574.65) opened for $1,800 on the button and “punting-peddler” ($90,937) called from the big blind. The 10♦10♣2♠ flop saw “punting-peddler” check, Blom bet $3,000 and “punting-peddler” check-raise to $8,400. Blom pushed back to the tune of $16,200, “punting-peddler” four-bet to $37,200, and Blom five-bet to $103,200. “Punting-peddler” called off his remaining $51,937 and just like that there was a $181,874 pot on the line.

Blom: 2♥2♣6♣6♠
“punting-peddler”: 10♥2♦K♥A♣

It was a sick cooler for Blom as his flopped full house was no good. He was actually drawing dead, which means “punting-peddler” was pushed the pot when the J♠ was put out on the turn followed by the 9♠ on the river.

Blom Continues Upswing While Dang Finishes as Thursday’s Biggest Winner

It was a good day for Hac “trex313” Dang on Thursday, which is when he won $235,000 playing $400/$1,000 CAP PLO. Dang played for more than two hours and won $136,000, which was actually the same game Viktor “Isildur1” Blom won $270,000.

Blom also won $71,000 playing 2-7 triple draw, but ended up losing $210,000 to “SallyWoo” at the fixed-limit Omaha hi/lo tables. Nonetheless, Blom ended the day a $165,100 winner.

Here’s a look at the biggest day’s biggest pot, which just so happened to go to Blom:

In other news from Thursday, “no_Ola” won $119,800 playing 288 hands of $200/$400 PLO and Patrik “FinddaGrind” Antonius won $100,8000 playing 2-7 triple draw for two hours.

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Biggest Winners/Losers (Full Tilt Poker)

Week’s Biggest Winners (9/26-10/3): Viktor “Isildur1” Blom (+$418,528), Hac “trex313” Dang (+$333,626), Ronny “ronnyr37617” Kaiser (+$287,801), Phil “Polarizing” Ivey (+$266,932), Dan “jungleman12” Cates (+$227,923), “mikki696” (+$225,309)

Week’s Biggest Losers (9/26-10/3): “samrostan” (-$499,427), “RookieNFL” (-$338,764), “punting-peddler” (-$331,213), Tom “durrrr” Dwan (-$287,771), Niklas “ragen70” Heinecker (-$281,972), Harry “Schoitl” Cassagrande (-$244,286), Isaac “luvtheWNBA” Haxton (-$162,201)

Year’s Biggest Winners: Kyle “cottonseed1” Hendon (+$3,718,516), Ben “Bttech86” Tollerene (+$3,016,676), Niklas “ragen70” Heinecker (+$3,003,787), Patrik “FinddaGrind” Antonius (+$2,488,856), “Rhje” (+$2,470,058), Alexander “PostFlopAction” Kostritsyn (+$2,263,950), Hac “trex313” Dang (+$1,914,639) “Odd_Oddsen”* (+$1,727,752), “no_Ola” (+$1,507,850)

Year’s Biggest Losers: Gus Hansen (-$4,344,829), “MalACEsia” (-$3,773,524), “samrostan” (-$3,673,926), Phil “Polarizing” Ivey (-$1,957,305), “punting-peddler” (-$1,573,696), Ben “Sauce1234” Sulsky (-$1,380,120), “patpatpanda” (-$1,330,885), Scott “mastrblastr” Seiver (-$1,220,399), “Johnbest” (-$992,253), Rui Cao (-$974,166)

*Denotes PokerStars