Because there are 5k euro sites to play on and he juggles his play between those. He also has an untracked deposit limit

Could be the next golden day pro to start streaming on Twitch. Hinted at it in a tweet

ya.. prob gonna get unibet to sponsor it. will be super interesting : )

Pretty sure if Viktor started streaming he would instantly kill it and surpass all the other poker twitch streamers who have been grinding it out the last two years. He would probably crush their views by a factor of 2x

I've heard that he wanted to do this, but the 5k limit on PokerStars makes it too difficult to have long or consistent streaming sessions.

In the beginning yea, but if he's not a good entertainer then he'll fall behind those guys after the hype dies out

Viktor doesn't seem to be overly energetic and charismatic, seems a little shy and reserved, but a lot of Scandies are like that. But it would be an instant smash hit for sure. If it were a restricted Unibet thing it would blow imo and would need to be like Tonkaa's 888 deal.

OK, serious question (but any answer is completely non-provable).

If data tracking tools were never invented (PT, HEM, etc), then how good would we think Viktor is?

I kind of suspect we'd think of him like Stu Ungar -- a genius at certain games and formats. Unfortunately for Viktor, data tracking has made it possible to expose holes in his game.

Didn't he do a stream for some kind of promotion once? Maybe a site that got new software or something? I swear I remember seeing him on a stream once maybe a year ago.

That was for Unibet, still vods available AFAIK.

Obviously I can't say for sure but he would have used these tools himself. He wouldn't be who he is if there were no tracking tools.

unibet vods are available on their twitch page. iirc there's 3 of them, which capture a lot but not all of what was streamed. good stuff but not 1% of what it could have been. The unibet employee knew very little about Viktor and didn't ask any interesting questions. Not the employee's fault, rather, unibet's.

Every question came from chat.

Exactly. fwiw I like Unibet and thoroughly enjoyed the VOD. However, with Viktor there is so much untapped potential for entertaining stories. Anecdotes and explanations giving insight into the life of a degenerate genius, into winning and losing millions, into the way he approaches different aspects of the game etc... many tens of very interesting subjects that I didn't were dealt with in your stream. Even if twitch chat wasn't as uncreative as it is, you simply aren't going to get Viktor talking through such a media. It is a little difficult because Viktor is not the most outgoing person when it comes to these things, at least when speaking English. But this is 99% a result of the way he thinks about these things - someone who themselves had a deep understanding of these interesting subjects would be able to ask the right questions and prompt Viktor when he encountered a block. This is obviously beyond twitch chat. People who can do this are of course few and far between. Joey Ingram or perhaps one of Viktor's personal friends are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head. Also Galfond and Sauce.

Again not at all a dig against Unibet, you achieved an acceptable undertaking of a difficult task.

His best games currently are the ones that there is no real data help (triple draw, 08) and many other pros are kind of throwing their hands in the air and saying "I don't know what to do in this game."

I *think* that he developed his NLHE HU game before PT and HEM really came into common use.

If we could somehow drop him into an alternate universe where these tools didn't exist (or, just drop him back in time to the 20th century), then we may be talking about Viktor as the greatest all around poker player who ever lived rather than marveling at his ability to run up millions and then punt them off while seeming to not care.

PT/HM have been in common use for over a decade.

I'm aware of that.

Blom first developed his HU game 2004-2007. He showed up on FTP in 2009.

I'm not sure what we're arguing here, though. Are you saying Blom's game is developed from analytics or data mining and he owes it to PT/HEM? I suspect the opposite is closer to the truth (that he has a genius-level gift for strategy and analytics/data mining are the achilles heel).

Good post imo

viktor not care of HUDS - he would have much greater edge if they not exist )) here's an interesting snip from his 2017 Unibet interview:

He's 26 (if Wikipedia is correct), I only meant that huds have been widespread his whole poker career.

Was he really playing poker at 14?

yes, that's when he started playing with his friends. However, I don't believe he started playing online for a year or two after that, and certainly not at the highest level.

According to the wikipedia article, he made >$275k a couple months after beginning online poker when he was 15 -- and promptly busted it; and then $1.9 million on iPoker when he was 17 and then the action dried up for him.

I've been away from poker for the last 4 years and it amazes me how people still talk about this guy...

he went on a 5 mil upswing at some point in the last 5 years... not much reason for people to forget him ... in fact, a 6 mil upswing if you include tournies. But he lost some of that back now.

He did this at least 3 times