Mysterious Swedish players invade the high-stakes poker tables

Posted by Steve Ruddock on Feb 27, 2011 Posted in Poker News | No Comments »

Over the past year or so a number of Swedish poker players have been popping up on the high-stakes tables at both Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars, and because of the Swedish gaming laws that require players participating in online poker games on a site outside of the European Union to pay an extraordinary amount of taxes, most of these Swedes play anonymously.

The trend began even before Isildur1 found his way to the nosebleed games on Full Tilt poker in late 2009, but Isildur1 –now known to be Viktor Blom—became the poster-boy for this group of mysterious Swedish players who show up at the high-stakes tables for a few days and then disappear into the night, only to resurface weeks or months later. Other players have followed suit, including the likes of Martonas, Lindqvro, and most recently Compris.

Compris made an appearance at the $100/$200 PLO games on PokerStars this past week and promptly pocketed over $460,000 according to the online poker tracking site www.highstakesdb.com. This is not Compris’ first appearance at the tables, but his play has been very sporadic, similar to Martonas, who was also spotted at the Full Tilt Poker tables this past week.

Overall, the results of these players are far from spectacular, which may be due to the increased competition at PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. They tend to start off very well, but as the top players start to get a read on their play they have had a hard time adjusting. As Isildur1 stated in an interview regarding his struggles at Full Tilt Poker, he said he was unaware there were players on his level, or above, because of his domination at the European sites. Apparently there are no durrrr’s, OMGClayAiken’s, and jungleman12’s at the non-US poker sites!

It’s unlikely we will ever learn the identity of these players until they have long left Sweden, because Swedish law states that players are taxed on the amount they WAGER at non-EU poker sites, instead of on the amount of money won. Because of this, these players have to fly under the radar, which means no talk of who they are, and they also need to be careful how much time they spend on Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars so as not to attract any unwanted attention –I’m sure the Swedish tax authority has a large file on anonymous poker players from Sweden at Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars.

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