Tom Marchese has a bright future ahead of him.

Before this January Tom Marchese hadn’t cashed in a single live poker tournament. After a final table appearance at the EPT Grand Final High Roller Event this weekend, the young online poker player has earned more than $1.4 million in a three-month stretch that bodes well for his future.

New Jersey native Marchese began his run in Atlantic City this January with a third-place finish at the Borgata Winter Open Championship Event, good for $190,027, or more than half as much as he’d won playing online poker tournaments since he first began playing at age 20. 

Impressive as his performance was at Borgata, Marchese didn’t really turn heads until February, when he won the first stop on the North American Poker Tour, the NAPT Venetian main event. There he defeated Sam Stein in heads-up play, overcoming a nearly 2-to-1 chip deficit to grab the $827,648 first prize and stake his claim as one of the top up-and-coming young poker pros.

March saw two more successes for Marchese. First he finished in 24th place out of a field of 333 players at the WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star main event, grabbing $20,500 for his troubles. Then he turned around and made his third final table of the year, finishing in fourth place at the Wynn Poker Classic $5,000 main event to win $73,356, bringing his three-month-long career’s total earnings to just over $1.1 million.

Now, with his fourth-place finish at the EPT Grand Final High Roller Event against some of the toughest competition in the world, Tom Marchese has proven to any doubters that his earlier live poker successes were no flukes. The €263,000 (US $350,125) he won in Monte Carlo brings his career winnings to $1,461,656 - not a bad take for three months’ work. Without a doubt, Marchese will be one of the top young poker pros to keep and eye on during this year’s World Series of Poker - and beyond.

With most of the US sleeping off their turkey and gravy hangovers this morning, there's not a whole lot of exciting news from the world of poker. But, when all else fails we can always look to last night's high-stakes online poker action for entertainment, especially when Isildur1 is at the tables.

The mysterious Swedish dynamo was back at it again, unfettered by the kind of swings that would put any regular player off poker for life. In the last two weeks he's been on both the losing and winning side of a world record-setting pot, and has ended most of his sessions up or down over a million dollars. And last night was no different.

After a short but sweet multi-player $300/$600 Pot Limit Omaha session, Isildur1 was up a paltry $392 grand. Wanting to step up the action, he sat down with Tom "durrrr" Dwan for some more PLO, but heads-up this time. Why Dwan continues to agree to these games is a mystery, as Isildur1 seems to destroy him every time, including last night. When durrrr finally stumbled off to bed, Isildur1 had $665,000 of his money.

Next up, Isildur1 took somewhere around $1.5 million from his frequent nemesis Patrik Antonius. He would have been smart to take his $2.5 million in proceeds for the evening and retire for the night. But in one last match up, he played a session against a player called Ziigmund, and lost $1.4 million in just a couple hours. Easy come, easy go for Isildur1.

When most poker players settle down for some online action, they sit down at a single cash table or enter one tournament at a time. There's also a sizeable minority who play two or three or five tables at once, satisfying their ADD and love of the game at the same time. And then there's the Russian online player who recently set a world record by playing the most hands ever within a 24 hour period. Over the course of 18 hours and 33 minutes, "innerspy" played 40,088 hands of online poker.

To put that in perspective, the average online poker game features somewhere around thirty hands per hour. At that rate, you'd have to play for 55 days, grinding it out twenty-four hours a day. Obviously "innerspy" played a whole lot of tables at once, and kept his bathroom breaks to a minimum.

The twenty-two year old poker pro was inspired to set the new record by an anonymous challenge issued on a Russian poker forum. Until he sat down to take on the challenge Saturday morning, he'd never played more than a paltry 20,000 hands in a day.

Of course there's one question that wasn't answered in any of the stories about this amazing feat - was he up or down at the end of the day? Because sure, playing 40,088 hands in one day is impressive. But playing 40,088 hands and turning a profit? That's something to really brag about.

For the last couple of weeks, the online poker world has been abuzz with the adventures and misadventures of a mysterious Swedish poker player with the handle Isuldur1. He's been on a roller-coaster, winning and losing more than most of us will earn in twenty years. Last week, he was on the wrong end of the largest pot in online poker history, losing almost $900,000 on a single hand. Well, that ain't nothing.

This weekend, Isuldur1 was again going heads-up against Patrik Antonius. And again, they played the largest pot in online poker history, this time, a staggering $1,356.947. And again, Isuldur1 lost. Unfortunately for him, that wasn't even the extent of the damage.

Over the course of the day he lost $3.3 million dollars in high-stakes poker play. But before you feel too bad for the guy, you should know a couple things. First of all, he's still up about $750,000 for the month. Yes, as of a couple weeks ago, that number was closer to $6 million, but making six figures over the course of a month ain't too shabby. And the second fact that tends to lessen sympathy towards Isuldur1 - he lost all that cash by being brave, and foolish, enough to play multi-table, heads-up action against both Patrik Antonius and Phil Ivey, simultaneously. Obviously that's a risky proposition for anyone who actually cares about money.

Partially offsetting his disastrous sessions against Antonius and Ivey, Isuldur1 has done substantially better against at least one other opponent. He has taken Tom "durrrr" Dwan for over $3 million in the last couple weeks.

The furious online action shows no signs of slowing down, so next weekend could well bring another record-setting pot. Or maybe Isuldur1's stash of ancient viking gold will finally run out, and he'll have to hit the $1/$2 tables until he can get his bankroll back up.

What do we know about the mysterious Swedish online poker player Isildur1? Not much, besides the fact that he must have a big, brass pair. The man (if he even is a man) is a mystery, but his actions speak volumes. The other day he was on the losing end of the biggest pot in online poker history. But last night, he was right back at it. And by the end of multiple sessions against some of the biggest names in poker, Isuldur1 was up almost $1.2 million bucks.

His games of choice are generally $500-$1,000 Texas Hold'Em and Omaha, and with stakes like that it's not surprising he tends to win, and lose, big. But last night, it was mostly golden for the plucky Swede. He had a rough start to the session, losing a cool $900,000 to Phil Ivey. Next up were Cole South and Tom Dwan, and that's when things turned around for Isildur1. He won $550,000 off South, and $160,000 off Dwan.

Clearly these lowly games weren't quite stimulating enough for him, because he then started playing six tables at once, against pros Patrick Antonius and Ilari Sahamies. Despite the distraction of the multi-table action, he managed to take Antonius for $330,000 (a drop in the bucket compared to the cash flowing the other way a couple nights ago) and Sahamies for a cool million bucks.

For those counting along at home, that gives Isildur1 a profit of about $4 million bucks or so, in the last four weeks of high-stakes online action. The only questions now are whether he'll continue his incredible roller-coaster run, and who exactly this guy (?) really is.

In No Limit Holdem you can rise to the top at lightening speed and you can also get eliminated just as quickly. Sadly, it's the latter that I have to report here as the WSOP Event 54 has come to an end for two Team Cakers: claytoncomic and veeRob.

Claytoncomic (pictured above), a stand-up comedian out of New York City, took his leave today only minutes ago after he got it all in with Q-J for top pair (queens) against an opponent with the same pair but a better kicker with a king. Clayton isn't new to live poker tournament action as he has over 30 live tourney wins under his belt. Hopefully we'll see Clayton again soon, either on stage or at the tables, either way he's sure to put on a good show.

Just prior to claytoncomic's exit, we got word that veeRob, a poker pro out of Las Vegas, busted as well when, as he Twittered, "Raised w/99 2 callers flop J98 we get it all in he has QT. Weak." Transaltion: veeRob raised preflop with pocket nines. The flop came J-9-8. He and one other player ended up going all-in and it turned out his opponent had flopped a straight to bet his set. That sucks.

To the rest of Team Cake still out there battling it out, good luck, and may the Cake be with you.