Being Isildur1 right now is turning out to be hard work for Viktor Blom. Usually you wouldn’t expect players to jump at the chance to face Blom’s online avatar. Seeing as most of the his peers are enjoying a sojourn in Sin City for the World Series of Poker (WSOP) it explains why we haven’t heard much from the PokerStars Superstar Showdown. Yesterday he was back with a vengeance. His latest opponent was drawn from Le Republic over the channel and Blom was in no mood to let up on Frenchman Rui Cao.
The Swede took his record in the series to 7-3 after making light work of his opponent in the first match up since the events of Black Friday. Cao was almost blasted out of the water before 1,000 hands had been dealt and after 1,250, the two moved from NLHE to Pot-Limit Omaha aka not good news for Cao. Blom took almost every pot and after half an hour that was that. It puts him up by more than $500k for the 10 showdowns to date.
The UKIPT is also not taking any time off for the WSOP and the current leg in Newcastle enters its last day later today. Richard Sinclair takes the chip lead into the final day and standing at 1,938,000 in the chip count he’s well ahead of second placed Rajesh Verma (1,343,000). In addition to the £67,000 first prize the winner can use it as a stepping stone and may even follow in the footsteps of the prodigy Jake Cody in winning a Triple Crown. That’ll be a long way away though. The final eight will be seated as follows on today’s final table:
Seat 1: Tadgh Ryan, Ireland – 836,000
Seat 2: Rajesh Verma, United Kingdom, 1,343,000
Seat 3: Rakesh Paul Gupta, United Kingdom – 958,000
Seat 4: James Morris, United Kingdom, 926,000
Seat 5: Barry Foley, Ireland – 446,000
Seat 6: Richard Sinclair, United Kingdom – 1,938,000
Seat 7: Tim Slater, United Kingdom, 858,000
Seat 8: Jonathan Gawith, United Kingdom, 898,000.
