The World Series of Poker (WSOP) is one of the biggest tournaments on the poker circuit and professional poker players do their best to make sure they attend the WSOP as the payouts are huge and they also have the opportunity of winning a coveted WSOP bracelet. Not for Sweedish poker player Viktor Blom who decided to pass up the WSOP tournament and instead play online poker during the course of the event.
Blom generally plays at Full Tilt Poker (FTP) and has known to have won and lost millions on the FTP website. Reports suggest that during the course of the WSOP event, Blom won over $500k playing online poker. A number of professional online poker players decided to attend the WSOP event and hence the number of players and the competition on the FTP website was a lot less heavy than usual. Blom made the most of his opportunities and ended up being the second biggest winner during this time.
Some of the online poker players who attended the 2014 WSOP included Gus Hansen, Phil Galfond, Dan Cates, Doug Polk, Scott Palmer, Isaac Haxton and Ola Amundsgard. While the pots at the 2014 WSOP were a lot higher when compared to what was on offer on online poker websites, the competition at the 2014 WSOP was also much tougher.
Blom has been known to win and lose millions playing online poker. Despite winning $500k during the last 2 months, Blom is still in debt and owes nearly $1.3 million. Blom has been one of the regular online poker players on the FTP website for a number of years and his current losses till date are around $18 million. These numbers do not seem to affect Blom as he takes it in his stride and continues to play despite severe losses. Blom had more than $2 million in winnings in Feb 2014 but ended up having a bad run which resulted in him owing more than $1.3 million in July.
One of the reasons why online poker players are able to win and lose millions is because they invest a considerable period of time over an extended time period to accumulate these large sums of money. Online poker player Gus Hansen decided to take a break for over a month. Hansen currently is in the hole for close to $3.5 million.
