PokerStars pro Viktor “Isildur1” Blom improved his record to 3-1 in the site’s SuperStar Showdown. Over the weekend, he edged out Eugene “MyRabbiFoo” Katchalov and lodged his largest victory margin yet at $111,000. During the four SuperStar Showdowns held so far, Blom has recorded $165,000 in earnings.
Blom was fresh off back-to-back wins against PartyPoker pro Tony G and Durrrr Challenge combatant Dan “w00ki3z” Cates, two tough competitors by any stretch of the imagination. The blinds were once again set at $50/$100 and the SuperStar Showdown was spread across four No Limit Hold’em tables on PokerStars, the world’s largest online poker site.
Blom got off to a lead against Katchalov from the start, moving ahead by nearly $12,000 after just over 400 hands. Katchalov ultimately brought the scoreboard back to even and then drew blood when Blom 5bet all-in before the flop with a lowly 10-7 of hearts only to run into Katchalov’s pocket jacks. Following that ill-timed 5Bet, Katchalov 5bet all-in with pocket eights only to see Blom table rockets.
Blom led by $10,000 at the halfway point and grew his edge substantially in the early portion of the second half. A set-over-set situation resulted in Blom scooping a $62,500 pot to build his lead to just shy of $50,000. Katchalov struck back, however, after making a flush against Blom’s straight to shave the Swede’s lead to $11,000. Needless to say, it was anyone’s game at that point.
Blom sucked out with 10-8 against pocket jacks after the money went in on an eight-high flop. Despite being behind, Blom watched as a saving eight on the river fell to give him trips and he raked in a pot worth $31,000. Down the stretch, however, the cards continued to fall Blom’s way, epitomized by a jacks versus aces hand that occurred late in the game.
According to the PokerStars Blog, Blom and Katchalov were quite cordial following their high-stakes match, as the following discussion was posted in a chat box:
MyRabbiFoo: gg man… u obv played really well
Isildur1: i ran really crazy, if not 8 would come on river when we were even
Isildur1: u would beat me i think
MyRabbiFoo: yea i ran bad couple times :/…but u still played really well, dunno how match would have turned out in other case of course
Fans of the SuperStar Showdown won’t have to wait long for its next installment to pan out. According to “PokerStars Steve” on the TwoPlusTwo forums, the next cycle will run on Sunday, February 27th against an online qualifier. This will mark the first time that Blom has faced off against someone other than a poker pro and the action gets underway at 15:00 ET.
Even before the match began, posters on TwoPlusTwo questioned how Katchalov would fare in a heads-up cash game. One member of the forum explained, “Very surprised Katchalov decided to play in this. I know he’s a beast in MTTs and high-stakes Mixed Games, but how good is his heads-up No Limit Hold’em game?”
Another poster responded, “He has a lot of cash to burn from recent tournament scores and it has to be +EV for getting his name out there. I remember a commentator saying recently for all his success, Katchalov still isn’t quite a household name.” Katchalov won the $100,000 Super High Roller Event during the 2011 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure for $1.5 million. He also won the 2007 Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic, a stop on the World Poker Tour, for $2.4 million.
According to the Hendon Mob, Katchalov has over $6 million in live tournament earnings to his name, which is good for 38th overall.
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