The real Isildur1. No, seriously.
Ever since the online poker player known only as Isildur1 showed up on the scene late last year and started taking on anyone who will play him, speculation has run rampant as to who he actually is in the real world. Nobody knows for sure to this day just who Isildur1 is, but the poker world seems to have decided that the most likely candidate is one Viktor Blom of the Swedish town of Uddevalla.
Judging from the comments, at least a few people in the poker world think the mystery is solved now that a blog has appeared on the internet that's supposedly written by Blom/Isildur1 himself. The only problem is that, given what we know about Isildur1's grasp of Standard Written English from his taunts and rants in the chat box, this blog an obvious fake.
The Isildur1 blog might not be the real thing, but it really is classic stuff. First off, the writing sparkles - in place of the chat-speak you would expect from a young online poker player is the kind of English you usually get in notable novels, glossy magazines and, of course, the fabulous Cake Poker blog. Second, the amount of effort the writer has put into researching the obscure Swedish town of Uddevalla, and subsequently using all those details in the blog posts, is pretty astounding. And finally, for anyone who's been following the fortunes of the mysterious Swede, it's funny. Really, really funny.
"It was a real moral victory that the next day I didn't throw myself off Uddevalla Bridge," Isildur1 writes of his legendary loss to Brian Hastings slast December. "I spent most of the next month under the bedsheets listening to every album ever recorded by Bright Eyes, most of the EPs, and some of Conor Oberst's solo projects. Then I plotted my revenge on the Cardrunners guys."
Writing about his massive loss to Phil Galfond, Isildur1 says, "I can beat all of these guys from a clean start. I am better than any of them. But after ten, fifteen, twenty hours of play, when I am facing my sixth opponent, even I, the mighty Isildur1, can be slain by an ignoble opponent. Think of me as a prize bull, drugged, stunned, stabbed with darts, falling to a final puny matador."
And at the end of an insight into his painful childhood being bullied by schoolmates, the online poker star writes, "I guess that's when I took to my room. Sometimes I still think of them when I'm hurtling through my bankroll at the poker table. I want to kill my opponents but it might be easier to kill myself. All-in, all-in, all-in. Smash, smash, smash!"
There are only three posts on the blog at this point and it's hard to know whether its writer has the time to keep up the act, but if there's even a tiny bit more content on the way this blog should win an award. Maybe "Best Adapted Poker Blog"?
