Another lower stakes edition of the
SuperStar Showdown took place on Sunday, April 24. The four-tabled heads-up between Blom and the online qualifier
‘Mastermixus’ from Poland was one tenth of the size of the usual stakes, both having $15,000 challenge bankrolls for the 2,500 hands of $5/$10 NLHE.
Viktor 'Isildur1' Blom
A little over 200 hands into the game,
‘Mastermixus’ was already up $1,140, but it did not take long for Blom to reverse things and reach +$1,710. A series of all-ins came in the next couple of hands on the same table: first the Pole tried to use Blom’s favourite move against him, trying to bluff overbet a busted combo draw on the river.
Board:
K T 8 7 3 ‘Isildur1’:
2 8 ‘Mastermixus’:
Q 9 Next, Blom took a $2,500 pot with triple eights against his opponent’s pocket aces, right before flopping a flush to beat the Pole’s top two pairs. The three all-ins within only a matter of seven hands granted
‘Isildur1’ a $4,705 lead.
After a five minutes break, play continued with Blom winning for the most part, while
‘Mastermixus’ kept up a passive game, taking only a few but major pots. By around 700 hands into the session, he thus managed to reduce the Swede’s lead to $450; what is more, hand #1,000 saw the Pole in lead of one BB.
‘Mastermixus’ then began to win the most important hands, despite Blom still winning the majority of them in number; he managed to amass a peak $3,705 lead at around 1,460 hands.
Blom then slowly started to turn the tide, up until the largest pot in the game to give him the lead once again:
Board:
5 4 2 Q ‘Isildur1’:
J 3 ‘Mastermixus’: A 3 They went all-in already on the flop and the
9 river for a flush gave the $6,230 pot to Blom over
‘Mastermixus’’ straight and put him into a $290 lead with around 860 hands remaining.
Although around 2,000 hands the Pole tried to regain his lead, his aspirations were turned down by
‘Isildur1’ winning a 2,570 pot with pocket kings. This hand basically set the final result, ‘Mastermixus’ going relatively passive for the last 100 hands or so. Blom finished with a $1,279 profit but the Pole most probably did not mind taking home the $13,721 remaining from his challenge bankroll as a compensation.