Round 1 goes to the new guy. Yesterday at noon ET over on PokerStars, the site’s newest and most ballyhooed sponsored pro, Viktor “Isildur1” Blom squared off against their most famous poster boy, Daniel “Kid Poker” Negreanu in the first of two Superstar Showdown matchups. The battle was hyped up by the site for two weeks in the hopes of generating the type of industry buzz reserved for only the biggest events. By the amounts of columns and forum posts created leading up to the event, it looks like they succeeded.
Coming into the match, each of the participants had obvious strengths and weaknesses. Working to Blom’s advantage was his hyper aggressive and fearless nature, not to mention a phenomenal ability to play at a high level on several tables at once. On the other side, Negreanu plethora of experience in big events to go along with his always cool demeanor were his biggest assets. Blom has been known to blow up quite famously on occasion and lose hundreds of thousands in the process. Negreanu is usually able to pick apart a non-patient opponent. Yesterday, however, none of that really mattered.
If you had lunch plans and were hoping to catch the second half of the 2,500 hand match up, well then, you need to wait until next week to watch the action. In just 1,439 hands, Blom had managed to bludgeon his Canadian adversary and take away all $150K that he started with. The time of the carnage was right around 4 hours, but the conclusion of this match seemed to be pretty evident from even very early on. On just the 9th hand of play, Blom felted Negreanu on one of the 4 tables by river shoving with a suck out of a full house. Negreanu helplessly called with his two pair as Blom scored the first major blow of the day.
For those waiting for Negreanu to get himself back into the game? Well, they are probably still waiting. Negreanu was unable to get anything going at any point in the contest and Blom basically pummeled him throughout. Blom had ¾ of the chips in play just 700 hands in and never relinquished much of the lead. He won just about every large pot played, 12 out of 14 pots over $20K to be exact, leaving Negreanu picking up small ones.
For Kid Poker, it’s back to the drawing board. In getting ready for the first matchup, he played with Isaac Haxton, the only player that beat Blom in a SuperStar Showdown and practiced multi-tabling in the days leading in. He may need to rethink his strategy, or hope he gets hit with the deck next Sunday. Same time, same place. Stay tuned.
