Journalist Visits Sweden In Search of Isildur1

LuckyJim (left) and Isildur1 (right) chat about the latter’s online poker exploits.

Well, the news is out that Isildur1 has accepted Tony G’s offer to stake him in The Big Game IV, so the entire poker world is abuzz over the fact that they may soon learn the online phenom’s true identity. But the G’s offer specified that Isildur1 could stay disguised if he so wished, so we’re not getting our hopes up that we’ll get to find out that Isildur1 is really Mats Sundin (or, maybe, that Isildur1 isn’t Mats Sundin).

With the possibility of the pseudonymous nosebleed-stakes grinder revealing himself out of the equation for the moment, that leaves old-fashioned journalism as the last bastion of hope for finding out who Isildur1 really is. Luckily for all of us one writer from England, a man known as LuckyJim, has taken it upon himself to travel to Sweden in search of the truth about Viktor Blom, the young man rumored to be online poker’s most famous screen name.

“He has become poker’s equivalent of J.D. Salinger,” LuckyJim writes of Blom. “He doesn’t want to speak to the public; but this silence only makes us want to know more about him. Who i

s this 19 year old that can win and lose five million dollars, and be back to play again?”

To track down the answer to that question, LuckyJim visited Blom’s hometown of Uddevalla and then headed onward to Gothenburg, where Blom is said to live with his brother, talking to anyone might have information about the reclusive 19-year-old. The result? A six-part series, the first three of which are already available here, here and here. The final three parts should be posted in the near future. 

Bonus: for those of you who are still wondering exactly who the mind is behind the Isildur1 poker blog, it might be worth taking a close look at LuckyJim’s writing style in his pieces about Blom. Just sayin’.