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WSOP 2011 is in cold storage till November and no one is really interested in Full Tilt any more (except the players who are still to get their money). So the news is shifting on other issues. The man in the news at the moment is Viktor Blom and he is in the news for being the lead feature in the August issue of Bluff Europe.

As Isildur1 Blom changed the way nosebleed online poker was played in the latter part of 2009, when winning and losing millions of dollars in a session became commonplace. Then the revelation of the mystery man Isuldur1 as Viktor Blom by PokerStars turned out to be a damp squib, because this was already common knowledge. So what is the big deal in Blom featuring in Bluff Europe?

For those who are interested, this will be the first interview with an English language magazine that the 20-year-old Blom will be giving. He will describe his epic rise in high stakes online poker, talk about how he took Tom Dawn to the cleaners and also say how he felt when he lost five million dollars in a matter of days to the likes of Brian Hastings and Cole South. And his female fan following will be thrilled see him on the cover from a shoot with photographer Rankin. The number of the female fan following is not known, but Jenny Woo did rank him as the 6th most sexy poker player.

Philip Conneller, Editor for Bluff Europe, explains the choice. “Viktor is now a proud member of Team PokerStars and, although still notoriously publicity shy, is beginning to emerge from the shadows. … So, it’s very exciting that we’ve finally got him.” The issue also contains the portrait and fashion photographer’s depictions of other members of Team PokerStars including Liv Boeree, Bertrand Grospellier, Sandra Naujoks and Dario Minieri. Liv is a favorite of Bluff Europe. In a first of its kind deal for Bluff Europe, iPad users are being allowed to download the August issue for free in advance of its publication on the web or anywhere else. iPad savvy poker fans simply need to search for ‘Bluff Europe’ in Apple’s iTunes Store and downloading their copy for free.

The seventh season of High Stakes Poker is going strong. Vanessa Selbst is generating a lot of heat there and not just at the poker tables. Since High Stakes Poker is a televised event there needs to be some spice added. This is done by the lovely hostess Kara Scott who gets personal with the players. In the “30 Seconds with Kara Scott” segment she asked everyone at the table which actor should play them in a movie about their life. The answers reveal a lot about the players. Andrew Robl and Vanessa Selbst both said Matt Damon. Phil Ruffin went with Pierce Brosnan. Bill Klein chose Robert Redford to portray him. Antonio Esfandiari selected an actor with an equally unpronounceable name – Michael Imperioli. David Peat could not make up his mind, so he gave two options – Jim Carrey and Danny DeVito.

The response that started burning the online poker forums was Vanessa wanting a man to play her in a movie. Vanessa does not hide her sexual inclinations in a closet, but even she would not have been prepared for the kind of explicit banter at Two Plus Two. One poster pointed out that it was not a question of gender, but which actor looked most like her. Another said, “She is a lesbian and obviously identifies herself in a more masculine role. Just look at the way she dresses and her mannerisms. So is it out of the question for a lesbian female who identifies strongly with masculinity to want a man to play her?” A pertinent comment was that are no “masculine looking” women in Hollywood and therefore Vanessa chose a man. A poster countered this saying, “I don’t think Damon’s masculine enough IMO”.

There was no reaction from Vanessa to these comments. She has continued to do what she is best at and that is playing poker. She is competing in the Main Event of the 2011 North American Poker Tour Mohegan Sun wearing a PokerStars patch. Vanessa won this event last year and is back to defend her title. And she is doing it in style. At the end of Day 3 she leads the chip counts with 1,406,000. The field is down to 24 and she is by far the biggest name in that list.

High roller poker tournaments seem to be the order of the day. In March the online poker room Full Tilt Poker had announced a series of high roller events ending with the awarding of the Onyx Cup. Now World Poker Tour (WPT) has jumped on the high roller bandwagon. Through a press release from Los Angeles, WPT has announced the debut of its Super High Roller Event on May 18 and May 19 during the upcoming World Championship series at the Bellagio. The Super High Roller event will have a buy in of $100,000, which is the largest entry fee in the history of WPT. Action from the Super High Roller event will be televised on FSN along with other WPT World Championship episodes.

Steve Heller, CEO of WPT, said, “Hosting a hundred thousand dollar buy in event within the WPT World Championship series means the world’s elite players have a chance to show their mettle as they battle for one of the year’s most coveted titles and one of the highest buy-in titles, all within a single week.” WPT champion and winner of eight World Series of Poker bracelets, Erik Seidel (in picture) has confirmed participation. So have Daniel Shak and Justin “BoostedJ” Smith.

The press release says that because the game’s top professionals will already be at the Bellagio for WPT World Championship during this period, the Super High Roller event will attract the premier players and generate a robust prize pool. However not everyone in the poker fraternity agrees with this assessment. The reason forwarded is that the inaugural Onyx Cup event takes place the week before and also will be the preferred event for most players. Not many players will be willing to shell out for two high roller tournaments in the space of a week. The pessimists are predicting a participation of about 20 poker professionals for the WPT event, which will reduce the prize pool to that of a second grade event. On the other hand they calculate that the turn out for the Onyx event will be around 45. Only time will tell who will have to eat his words.

During the last couple of days Full Tilt Poker had set the poker industry buzzing with their plans to make a major announcement. There were educated guesses that the announcement would involve some sort of land casino tournaments. These guesses were not incorrect. Full Tilt Poker has now made the announcement that it will be hosting land poker tournaments titled the Onyx Cup Series.

The announcement was in the nature of a bikini. Though it revealed a lot, some vital information remained concealed. The series will consist of six major events with buy-ins ranging from $100,000 to $300,000. The Grand Finale event will have a $250,000 buy-in with Full Tilt Poker adding $1 million to the prize pool. The total prize pool across all six events is expected to cross $30 million. The top three finishers of each event will get points, and whoever accumulates the most points by the end of the series will be the Onyx Cup winner. The events will take place in the United States, Europe and Asia. The first event will be held on May 11 and 12 in Las Vegas.

Now for what the bikini does not reveal. The dates and venues of the last five events are yet to be announced. The Onyx series tournaments will be televised, but Full Tilt Poker has not yet announced the name of its television partner. Either the online poker room has not yet decided on the television partner or it will make the grand revelation later.

The Onyx series will obviously feature only the top poker professionals. Though the events are of the “open” type in which any one can enter, the number of players who can afford to commit about a million dollars as buy-ins for only six tournaments is fairly small. The Full Tilt Poker professionals are expected to be participating. Howard Lederer, Erik Seidel, Chris Ferguson, Erick Lindgren and John Juanda have already confirmed participation. Phil Ivey, Tom “durrrr” Dwan, Gus Hansen and Patrik Antonius are expected to follow suit. The million dollar question is whether poker players from competing online poker rooms, like Daniel Negreanu of PokerStars, will join in.

Online qualifiers for the first Onyx event start at Full Tilt Poker on March 15. The buy-ins and other details should be up at the Full Tilt Poker web site.

About a month ago when the leading online poker room PokerStars signed up Isildur1, it promised to reveal the real identity of the mystery online poker player during the PCA. The announcement came as promised but without the expected fanfare. There was a simple message at the PokerStars web site that Isildur1 was Viktor Blom. The hype degenerated into a damp squib. The reaction from the poker world was “We told you so!”

The write up at PokerStars read, “But despite all the attention, the endless forum threads and the scores of column inches written online and in magazines, the truth about Isildur1’s real identity somehow remained a mystery. … Then, in early 2011, the man behind the avatar was finally revealed to be Swedish pro Viktor Blom, putting an end to months of speculation.”

Though Isildur1 has beyond doubt taken the nosebleed stakes online poker by storm, his alter ego has made minimal impact at live poker and even less at live tournaments. Blom’s total live tournament earnings are only $52,654 and that too from a single cash. Blom finished 16th in the No Limit Texas Hold’em event at WSOPE in September 2010. In the Bluff Player of the Year rankings Blom is at number 4,066, which does not count for anything. Incidentally it was Sorel Mizzi who topped the Bluff rankings. PokerStars says, “Viktor will be playing all the major events in the months to come, looking to take down his first title.” The one thing that needs to be said in Blom’s defense is that he is not yet of age to play live poker tournaments in the United States, and that is where most of the action is based.

Jenny Woo of Gambling 911 voted Isildur1 as the 6th most sexy poker player without knowing of his real persona based exclusively on the allure of his online avatar. She said, “Isildur1 has taken his persona from the pages of Lord of the Rings, which makes this mystery man all the more riveting, igniting my inner sexual being.
His name means “devoted to the moon”. The moon has female associations because of the accident that its period is close to that of the female menstrual cycle.” Now that she knows he is Blom, will he fall in her rankings?