Who is Isildur1?
Friday, November 20, 2009 - Gene Bromberg
During the WSOP Main Event we learned that eventual-runner-up Darvin Moon had never played online poker. Did not, in fact, even have an email address. And many people treated this news with the same amount of incredulity as they would if Darvin said he lived, well, on the Moon. We live in a wired world, where WiFi and 3G and smartphones and laptops keep us continually connected with the virtual reality of the internet. Many people spend more time with their Facebook friends than their “real” friends (the word “real” now requiring quotation marks) and of course you’ve already encountered folks at some spectacular event who, instead of enjoying said spectacular event, are instead hunched over their phones texting or Tweeting about it. Maybe, once or twice, you’ve done this yourself.
We’re broadcasting the minutiae of our lives to the world, baring our souls for anyone who cares to tune in. And this at a time when many governments around the world have decided that granting ANY privacy rights to their citizenry is simply too dangerous in these scary times. And so you have the odd spectacle of Big Brother watching over your shoulder…while you’re happily showing BB the Halloween party pics you posted to your blog.
But there are those who would rather keep the world at a remove, and others still who want to keep their “real” and virtual lives separate. And you can do that online, of course–create a new name, a whole new persona, and live a double (or triple, or quadruple, depending your bandwidth) life. Remaining anonymous can be a challenge, especially when thousands of cyber-sleuths around the world can quickly pool resources and brainpower to suss out who you really are. People love a good mystery, and right now a very compelling one is playing out in the poker world. About three weeks ago a player named Isildur1 appeared as if from nowhere and sat down at some of the high-stakes Hold-Em and PLO games.
There aren’t THAT many folks who play at those stakes and so an unknown interloper was quickly noticed. Especially as he posted positive results against some well-known cash-game monsters at the $100/200 PLO and $200/400 NLHE tables. But the story aquired new life when Isildur1 moved up to the super-nosebleeds and took on some of the biggest cash-game players in the world. He played against Cole South, Brian Townsend, David Benyamine and Illari “Ziigmund” Sahamies, posting some wins (and some losses) and leaving Ziigmund so spooked by the new player that he quickly quit the field.
But the Isildur1 locked horns with Tom “durrrr” Dwan. And as those two battled with millions of dollars on the table the poker forums blew up with people speculating on who the heck this mystery man was. Was this the same player who, a few months ago, had appeared out of nowhere under the name “martonas” and taken on the best in the world? It seemed that Isildur1 was from Sweden–could it be Viktor “Blom90″ Blom, another cash-game wunderkind with a name like a Bond villain? As Isildur1 posted a THREE MILLION DOLLAR win in just a handful of sessions against durrrr people started speculating that this implacable poker machine must be just that–a machine, a bot, a computer playing extremely well and running insanely hot. Was this possible? Was the best humankind had to offer being obliterated by lines of code?
It was under these ominous conditions that Patrik Antonius climbed down from his Olympian perch and sat down with Isildur1. Antonius won a few pots to take the early lead…and then won the biggest pot in online poker history. Playing PLO the two each put a fortune in the center of the table after the turn with each hold top two pair. But Antonius had the nut flush draw and a gutshot to boot and it was the gutterball that struck as the river brought the 8d and won the…wait for it…the $878,958.50 pot for Antonius.
From there Antonius went on to post nearly a three-million dollar win. And while sharks do not typically hunt in packs when there’s blood in the water they swim up from miles around. With Dwan having returned to the online felt after traveling to London for an event, Isildur1 last night took on durrrr, Antonius…and Phil Ivey. AT THE SAME TIME. Playing seven different tables against, arguably, the three best online cash-game players in the world was an epic act of either courage or lunacy. Antonius again got the best of him, Ivey less so, but the fact that Isildur1 is still a net winner after taking on the titans of online poker is remarkable in and of itself.
And the question remains–who is Isildur1. Can we get a hint from his screen name, which comes from The Lord of the Rings. Isildur was the warrior who, after cutting the Ring from Sauron’s finger, refused to throw it into the fires of Mount Doom. Bad call, that. How that figures into Isildur1’s identity is unsure, though one wag at Two Plus Two described him as the “Lord of Ring Games”. Nice.
One other poster came up with a fictional comparison that I thought of as well–Keyser Soze, the mysterious, all-powerful crime lord from the film The Usual Suspects. Asked about Keyser Soze, one of his betrayed pawns (played by Kevin Spacey) says, “He was supposed to be Turkish…some say his father was German. Nobody believed he was real.” And, later, when asked if he thinks Soze will ever reappear, Spacey says, “You think a guy like that comes this close to getting caught and sticks his head out? If he comes up for anything, it will be to get rid of me. After that… my guess is you’ll never hear from him again.” Chances are Isildur1 will reappear, maybe even tonight, to battle at the highest stakes in the world. But will we find out Isildur1’s identity before, like Keyser Soze, we’re left saying “And like that…he’s gone”.
Tags: durrrr, isildur1, martonas, patrick antonius, tom dwan
