Home / Poker News March 2011 / Viktor Blom’s impact on the high-stakes cash games at PokerStars
Viktor Blom’s impact on the high-stakes cash games at PokerStars
Posted by: James Carter. - Sun, 2011-03-20 14:06
For years, the online poker community took it for granted that the place for cash game poker was at Full Tilt’s nosebleed tables. Likewise, the best place for tournaments was over at PokerStars. Isildur1’s signing as a PokerStars pro has blurred those well accepted and respected lines though. There’s little doubt regarding the fact that since his signing, the high stakes cash game action has picked up quite a bit at PokerStars. Before the arguably monumental move by the site’s management, we seldom ever heard or read about PokerStars in the daily
online poker news, which mostly featured cash game antics. Nowadays, the two top poker rooms,
Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars share the news-sections of various poker portals and although PokerStars is not quite on par with its biggest competitor in this respect, it has made tons of progress.
The only question now is: did Blom indeed have anything to do with the phenomenon we’re currently seeing? The answer to that would have to be “yes”. Blom’s arrival did indeed breathe new life into the cash game action at PokerStars, and the interesting thing is, he may not even have been directly responsible for the positive change. Sure, he did contribute directly too, after all, he did actively play. All that though is dwarfed by the indirect effect that his participation in
PokerStars cash games has produced: scores of other professionals made the move when they saw him playing there. Obviously, many of these guys still viewed him through the 2009 lens, seeing the biggest fish ever to grace the virtual green felt in him. Others (like Ilari Sahamies) simply thought that a change of pace wouldn’t hurt. In online poker, action always feeds more action, and as soon as a few of the high stakes regulars from Full Tilt started playing there, others joined the fray.
Everything considered, it is safe to say that Isildur1’s signing by PokerStars is the biggest and best such move ever undertaken by an online poker operation.
