Since my last blog, I guess that the latest buzz in the poker world has mostly been Pokerstars signing the famed Isildur1 as a Team Pro and choosing to keep his presumably unknown identity a continued secret. Well played Stars, well played. How they managed to snag Isildur away from Full Tilt is kind of mind-boggling, and granted, the thousands of 2p2 fanboys who have a boner for Isildur are probably not a prime audience for new accounts/deposits, but regardless, his signing has certainly been great for the games on Stars. We played a quick HU session his first day on Stars, then the ridiculous day when he somehow ran a few 6max stacks at 25/50 to well over 100k (and at one point came close to 200k on one table), I of course then missed his standard next-day dumping of 350k to Phil Galfond at 100/200 but got him for a bit yesterday across 4 HU tables back at 25/50. All things told, it has been a swingy last week but a ton of fun; his presence seems to make everyone hunger for the limelight a bit so you get some shot-takers in the 250BB 25/50 games and his style just makes everyone go bananas. Here's a graph of our HU play from the last week (I lost quite a bit in the 6max games):



I have coolered him a decent bit throughout our matches so far though, so it's not necessarily clear that I have the edge here. His playing style is one that I love to play against - mostly because it lets me splash around to my heart's contentment - and I hope that we continue to play more in the future. On the subject, I also sent an e-mail to Stars to play one of the 'HU challenges vs Isildur' but I only wanted to do it at 50/100 so I wouldn't have to sell any action and at all PLO, which I later learned is against their policy of at least 50% NL, so it looks like it won't happen. It's too bad since I've been looking for a good reason to play above 25/50 which I'm way over-rolled for at this point, and this would have been perfect but hopefully more situations arise in the coming future.

Here's a graph of the month yet to date (wooooo swings):




AI-expected winning not included for a reason; I'm running way above expectation and am a bit superstitious about posting graphs bragging about it. I've learned the hard way that the poker gods punish insolence swiftly :)...

All of the swingy HU sessions as of late have been great and a ton of fun but they have also made me a bit lazy about putting in hours since everything just pales so much in comparison. Hopefully I can continue to get action because otherwise pretty good chance I take the rest of the year more or less off and get ready for lots of travel/drinking coming up during the holiday season and onwards.

Hope you are all well.

Cheers,
Mike