The Queens!

You Got The Aces Kid?

Hah?

You Got Em?

You Got Pocket Rockets In That Hole Kiddo?

You Got The Wigwams Down There Sonny?

How Did You Get Here?

Did you Fly With American Airlines Top Gun?

Are You In The Big Game Just Waiting To Squeeze Two Little Bullets Off?

HEH HEH HA HA.

I Gotcha.

I Got A Read On Ya.

You Don’t Gots The Stones or The Snakes Eyes.

Its PokerTime Kid.

I was playing around on Second Life earlier (unbeknown to the IT administrators who delve out our bandwidth in the office) and I came to recall the good old days when Poker and Casinos existed in this ‘DisneyLand’ society.

So I did my research and I’m providing you a brief history of gambling in Second Life.

here was a time quite a few years ago that being a citizen in Second Life could involve the following; you could buy and sell virtual real estate, network and advertise to real clients, go a little deep into the not-so-underground other side of the world of virtual swingers clubs and brothels and even attend lectures by plenty of the world’s major universities. There was even a time that this utopian world had the ability to play online poker and casino, but alas this is no more.

A couple of years ago, there were quite a few news sources reporting that the FBI had been visiting many of Linden Labs virtual casinos and poker rooms.  Whilst Linden Labs denied they were under investigation by the FBI they quickly changed their policy stating that they would no longer anything related to casino activity. A sad day indeed for the online gaming world and for Second Life citizens,

Casinos had been a popular and entertaining Second Life activity and like the real life counterpart, had experienced growth. Residents utilized the Second Life currency, the Linden dollar to play various casino games ranging from the ever popular blackjack to our personal favourite, poker. A major reason that Second Life casinos were under a legal grey zone was the ease that was involved in converting Linden Dollars to United States currency.

Shortly after the UIGEA was passed, Second Life issued a statement outlining their understanding of the new law and how they might fit into it. They were neither a designated payment system nor a gambling service; they had limited liability as a service provider. They did try and seek clarification as the UIGEA become well understood – however in the long run, Second Life took a cautionary stance and banned gambling out right…

To date, there are literally thousands of posts scattered through the internet discussing the gaming stance and the UIGEA with reference to Second Life. There are numerous posts about whether their rights as virtual residents in the  libertarian and capitalist society have had their morality regulated to that not dissimilar of that of the dictator of Oceania, the ruling totalitarian leader featured in George Orwell’s 1984.

After writing 2 successive blog posts about Isildur1 and really enjoying the fact that he is so vigilant about his anonymity, to the extent that he’s almost more notorious than any other poker player out there, I thought I’d provide more information about the controversial and mysterious player.

Isildur1 is an anonymous Swedish high stakes online poker player. He started getting noticed in late 2009 when he took part in all ten of the largest pots in online poker history. During this time he played against poker greats such as Tom Dwan, Phil Ivey, Brian Townsend, Cole South and Patrik Antonius at stakes that went as high as $500/$1000. On 15^th November 2009, he had made a total winning amount of $5 million but by mid December, he was down to $2 million net.

One of his bad losses was featured in yesterday’s blog entry when he lost to Brian Hastings in a game that many say was unfairly won by Hastings.

After this collapse a number of regular opponents commented on his collapse. Ilari Sahamies said: “He’s playing 9 tables at once against Patrik [Antonius], [Phil] Ivey, and durrrr [Tom Dwan] – the guy must be missing a chromosome.”

Isildur1 is such a formidable force in No Limit Hold’em that many players refuse to play him. He did play against Phil Ivey after challenging him but lost to Ivey after a 3 day game, incurring a $3.2 million loss, and stating that Ivey was the toughest opponent he’d ever played.

            I'll not eat this cat for $1 million

You’d expect poker to be the biggest entertainer on shows like High Stakes Poker, but history has showed that this is not always the case. It certainly wasn’t on the Saturday night episode, where an interesting bet was made between Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan. Dwan bet Ivey that Ivey wouldn’t be able to resist eating meat for an entire year.

After lengthy discussions and negotiations between the 2 players, Ivey agreed to the bet. If he avoided all meat, including fish, for a year he’d get $1 million from Dwan. Later on, Ivey seemed happy with the deal, saying to co-host Kara Scott: “I was thinking about doing it for a while, so this is kind of like an added incentive.”

This particular High Stakes Poker episode was filmed a few days after Ivey finished in 7^th place at the WSOP main event final table and had won millions in side bets, including $1 million from Dwan. Do I detect some revenge in the air?

“I’m used to having million-dollar sweats with you,” Dwan said in response to losing $1 million in the game and the subsequent bet with Ivey.

Ivey even tried to wager the bet up to $2 million which he felt would have given him an even bigger incentive to give up meat for 365 days.

Dwan has since claimed that Ivey is not getting vaguely close to fulfilling his side of the bet- Dwan reportedly mentioned to Sammy George that Ivey was already trying to buy out of the bet.

Perhaps if Ivey borrowed some of Mel Gibson’s cow brain goo for his poker games he’d stay on top without having to eat meat.