Tom Dwan and Patrik Antonius looking justifiably sleepy. (photo courtesy of PokerNews)

The latest session of the durrrr Challenge should definitely prove two things. First, Patrik Antonius and Tom "durrrr" Dwan may actually finish some time before the predicted end of the world in 2012. And, second, this thing is a serious grind.

Eight and a half hours after sitting down to play some $200/$400 Pot Limit Omaha, they had completed 2,677 hands of poker... or just over 5% of the 50,000 hands needed to complete the challenge. And despite being up over $60K, Antonius barely put a dent in Dwan's overall lead. Like we said, this thing is a grind.

So even with Antonius' most recent windfall, Dwan still leads by $1,847,105. And that means that the Finnish pro only has only 14,020 hands to make up that lead. Unless something crazy happens, durrrr is going to win, and pocket an extra $500,000 for his troubles.

The whole thing has been just one of the many ups and downs in Patrik Antonius' year. In the last twelve months, he's been down as much as $3.15 million. But since March 12th, he's climbed back up out of that deep, dark hole, and earned back about $2.64 million of those losses. For Tom Dwan, the last year has been trending generally upwards, with the exception of a little $2 million or so blip when he insisted on taking on Isildur1.

Patrik Antonius dishes on Isildur1, durrrr and Ziigmund.

Poker pro Patrik Antonius might not be the most talkative guy at the tables, but when he does open his mouth, he tends to say some interesting stuff. This, despite the fact that he used to be a male model. He recently sat down for an interview (which you can watch here) where he talks about, among other things, battling it out with Isildur1 and Tom "durrrr" Dwan.

It's been a crazy year for the Finnish star. While most pros make headlines with big tournament wins, or on the poker TV show circuit, Antonius has been getting lots of attention for a variety of epic head-to-head tilts.

The biggest and most talked-about was his super high-stakes battle with the online legend Isildur1. Patrik took on the mysterious Swedish phenom over the course of a couple weeks, and they ended up playing the biggest pot in online poker history.

Antonius has also been tangling with the young American online star Tom Dwan, in the durrrr Challenge. This 50,000 hand battle has tilted badly in favor of Dwan in the last couple months, but it's not over yet. In fact, at the rate they're going it may never actually end.

Patrik talks about the challenge of taking on both those players in the video, starting at about the 9:30 mark. Fans of multi-tabling should be amused at Antonius' admission that his brain just can't handle anything more than three or four tables at once.

The video is pretty long, at about 50 minutes or so, but there's lots of good stuff in there. One other highlight is hearing Antonius dish about the questionable poker etiquette of his Finnish rival Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies. Apparently Patrik isn't a big fan of players who hit a big online pot then run for the hills, a practice that Ziigmund is somewhat known for.

According to professional player Tony G., the mysterious Swedish online poker sensation Isildur1 had been corresponding with him, and had agreed to play in this weekend's Big Game IV tournament. But in a note posted to his blog today, Tony G. says that Isildur1 has canceled and won't be appearing at the tournament.

According to the blog post, Tony G. received the following text message from Isildur1: "Sry for not coming, take care bud." Tony goes on to profess disappointment in the cancellation, and says: "I am washing my hands with him and moving on. Get on your bike!"

The plan had been for Isildur1 to play in the tournament with Tony G's money. Not only had the pro offered to stake the enigmatic Swede, he was also prepared to fly him and some friends in from Sweden to London, on his own dime. But apparently that wasn't enough.

Of course, it does raise the question of whether this is a case of the mysterious Swede suddenly getting cold feet, or whether the whole thing just a hoax perpetrated by Tony G. to hype up his poker tournament. There's no way to know for sure, at least until the day when Isildur1 is finally unmasked... if that day ever comes.

Beneath that ninja mask, Isildur1 is singing a sad song.

In just a short time on the online poker scene, the mystery Swede known as Isildur1 has inspired a lot of things: awe in those who can’t imagine losing $6 million, envy in those who wish they could play every day against the world’s best, and a blog written by someone with some deep insights into the Swede’s mindset. Now you can add music to that list, thanks to the new song “I Am Isildur.”

Written in a quiet, acoustic emo style that seems less fitting to Isildur1 than perhaps some sort of doom metal might be, the song recounts most of the mystery man’s exploits: his battles with Brian Hastings, taking on Phil Ivey, going busto and coming back, and not learning his lesson to not play pot-limit Omaha.

“I play heads-up for rolls 15 hours a day,” sings 23-year-old Swede Joacim Gustavsson, who made the song and video with his friends Sohello Shah and Fredrik Thomson. “Don’t care if you’re Phil Ivey, I just wanna add another table, I am stuck so let’s play higher, I’m steaming worse than Phil Hellmuth now.”

The Isildur1 of the song calls Brian Hastings “Burger Guy,” refers to Brian Townsend and Cole South as Hastings’ “cheating friends,” and tells his listeners not to dare min-bet him. The words have a bit of the rage we might expect from Isildur1, but they’re delivered so softly that they lose some of their punch. 

Maybe with a little double bass drum and some shredding electric guitar we could get a little closer to the dark abyss that lies within Isildur1’s soul. For now, though, this video is what we’ve got - at least until the real Isildur1 takes a breather from online poker for a moment, straps on an axe, and shows us the dark stuff he’s really made of.

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'.

Isildur1 is most likely not actually Mats Sundin. (image courtesy of PokerTableRatings.com)

Yes, as many of you guessed by now, our Isildur1 is Mats Sundin post was a joke. As far as we know, Isildur1 is still maintaining his secret identity.

Though we like to think that if he really is Mats Sundin, and he does actually play for charity, it would be the Human Fund that would be the beneficiary of his winnings.

Happy April Fools Day!

UPDATE

The good folks at PokerListings seem to have had a very similar joke planned. Sadly, they made the mistake of calculating April 1 based on North American time zones instead of doing it on Swedish time like we did. We hate to see their awesome video go to waste, so we have stolen shared it here for your enjoyment because it's pretty damn funny.

Mystery Swede no longer, Mats Sundin admits to being Isildur1.

A pair of media outlets in Stockholm, including Sportradion, are reporting some big news - the mysterious super high-stakes poker player previously known only as Isildur1 is actually retired hockey pro Mats Sundin. According to these reports, Sundin's agent will be making the official announcement later today.

While he's kept his identity private until now, Isildur1/Mats Sundin has stepped forward to reveal his identity, in preparation for a live appearance at the upcoming The Big Game IV, on April 11-13th, at Les Ambassadeurs Club in Mayfair, London. Professional poker player Tony G. made headlines when he offered to stake Isildur1 at the event, and even suggested he wear a mask to protect his identity. According to the reports, Sundin will be playing for the charity The Human Fund, and deliberately used the notoriety of his enigmatic online poker handle to help raise the profile of his appearance at the Big Game IV, in support of his charitable work.

Until today, most insiders have assumed that Isildur1 was actually the young Swedish pro Viktor Blom, despite Blom's assurances it was not him. The reality is surprising, though not as shocking as it seems on the surface. Mats Sundin is known as a relatively skilled poker player and has had some impressive results at live tournaments. He has no shortage of bankroll, even playing to the ultra high-stakes Isildur1 has been known for. Sundin made in excess of $25 million USD during his NHL hockey career, and owns a number of successful real-estate ventures in Stockholm. And those close to the hockey player have stated that he's spent the last year and a half logging huge hours playing online poker. 

If you win a big pot, the Swedes will tax you a lot.

Isildur1 is probably the best-known unknown player in the history of online poker. The poker public, rabid for more information on the fearless player known only by his online handle, has come up with plenty of theories as to exactly why he hides his identity from the world, and they range from the banal to the unbelievable. 

But if Isildur1 really is who many people seem to think he is - 19-year-old Swede Viktor Blom - then there’s a truly compelling reason for him to stay anonymous: he could owe hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes. Tax law in Sweden states that in games of chance, every wager can be taxed individually at a rate of 30%. Poker is considered a game of chance there, and every hand can be considered a new wager.

Getting an idea of the kind of sum Isildur1 could theoretically owe the government of Sweden requires a little bit of basic math: take the total number of hands he has played, multiply that figure by the average amount of money he has wagered on each hand, and then multiply that result by 30%. The average amount of money wagered isn’t available, but we do have one analog available: during the 33,303 hands played so far in the Durrrr Challenge, Patrik Antonius and Tom Dwan have together wagered $274,109,409, which works out to an average of $4,115.35 per player, per hand.

There aren’t any definitive numbers out there as to how many hands of nosebleed-stakes online poker Isildur1 has played, but one tracking site says he’s played upward of 294,000 hands of heads-up pot-limit Omaha and no-limit hold’em since October of last year. If his average wager is the same as Dwan’s and Antonius’ during their challenge, and the number of hands reported on the tracking site is correct, that would mean that Isildur1 has wagered a total of $1,209,912,900 during the last six months. 

If we assume that the value of the pots Isildur1 has won is 49% of that total (since he has lost money overall), At 30% per wager, that works out to a tax bill of $177,857,196.30. And of course, if his average wager or the total value of pots won were higher or lower, that would either raise or lower the tax figure.

So, to recap: 294,000 (total hands played) X $4,415.35 (average wager) X 49% (value of pots won by Isildur1) X 30% (tax rate) = $177,857,196.30 tax bill. 

It’s all theoretical, though - the existence of this tax law is a completely different animal than the Swedish government a) being able to prove that Isildur1 is indeed a Swede named Viktor Blom, b) being able to prove just how many hands of poker he has played and how much he has wagered, and c) actually bringing a case against Blom. 

That means that, at least for the time being, Isildur1 is safe wherever it is that he’s hiding out. But he’d do well to remember the words of George Harrison: “I’m the taxman, and you’re working for no one but me.” 

Tony G is one of Isildur1's biggest fans.

Professional poker player Tony G has made an unconditional public offer to stake the pseudonymous online poker mystery man Isildur1 in an upcoming made-for-television poker event.

In his latest blog the G-man tells the Swede that he’s such a big fan of his game that he wants to put up all the expenses necessary to bring Isildur1 to London for the Big Game IV being taped at the Les Ambassadeurs Club in mid-April. From travel expenses to lodging to the full buy-in for the 48-hour cash game, Isildur1 would have his entire experience paid in full.

In addition, Isildur1’s real-world anonymity would be protected by allowing him to take whatever measures he deemed necessary to go in front of the cameras. Tony G even offers to have a special Isildur1 mask made just for the occasion should the mystery Swede agree to make the journey.

In the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Isildur sought out the One Ring and once it was in his grasp he fell under the dark influence of the powerful Sauron. So if Isildur1 were to accept the G’s offer, that would pretty much make G poker’s Sauron. While the G is certainly influential, he’s not nearly the force that Sauron was. This offer is no One Ring, and highly unlikely to be accepted. Live poker is far too slow for a tortured online poker genius like Isildur1, who needs to see as many hands as he can to prove his greatness to the world.

Baby-faced Brian Hastings has isildur1's number.

In yet another epic beatdown at the ultra high-stakes online poker tables, Brian Hastings crushed Isildur1 to the tune of $1.5 million last night. The two played about 2,800 hands of $500/$1,000 Pot Limit Omaha. At the beginning of the session, things were going well for the mysterious Swede and he was up by as much as $400,000. But then things started going south, and kept going south, until he finally quit.

It's been an up and down week for Isildur1, but mostly down. He took $535,000 off Patrik Antonius and Ilari Sahamies, but promptly lost that and more to Phil Galfond. And that was before he sat down with Brian at the PLO table.

For those keeping score at home, Hastings is the same guy who took Isildur1 for about four million bucks back in December. At the same, there was lots of speculation that a loss like that meant the Swede was busto. But after licking his wounds and staying off the tables for a couple months, Isildur1 has recently mounted his comeback. Whether last night's rough patch means he'll retreat back to Gondor and keep a low profile for awhile remains to be seen.