The Scoop: Brian Hastings Discusses Legendary Heads-Up Match With Viktor “Isildur1” Blom

Brian Hastings, one of poker’s most respected online instructors, has earned an economics degree from Cornell University. He has cashed for more than $800,000 in poker tournaments, and still, he is most well known in the poker community for his online match in December of 2009, where he won more than $4.2 million from Viktor “Isildur1” Blom in a matter of hours playing $500-$1,000 pot-limit Omaha.

Hastings stopped by the set of “The Scoop” to tell the show’s host Diego Cordovez just how this historic match came about, and also to set the record straight about the supposed sharing of hand histories between himself, Brian Townsend and Cole South.

“It was during finals week at Cornell, and I was doing a little studying. I am good friends with Brian Townsend and Cole South, and Cole had just played a three or four-table session with Viktor one day, and I was sweating it while studying, just thinking, ‘I want to play, this looks like fun.’ Cole shot me a text saying that he was getting tired and was probably going to quit soon, and asked me if I wanted to play. I was like, ‘Yeah!’

I definitely thought it was a really good spot at the time. Viktor was very, very good at no-limit hold’em at the time and still is, and has gotten a lot better at pot-limit Omaha, but at the time was very raw at PLO. I know, from my own experience, that when I started playing PLO I thought I was a lot better than I was, and I thought it might be that sort of thing.

I think I was denying him no-limit action some, and so were some other players, but I certainly would have played him half no-limit and half PLO. I think he is more of a reverse game selector than a game selector. Yesterday I saw he was nine-tabling heads-up against three different opponents, one of which was Dan “jungleman12” Cates.

Just to correct the public perception [that we shared hand histories], I have actually been meaning to do this and was thinking about posting a blog on it recently. So, Brian purchased 30,000 hand histories from PTR (Poker Table Ratings), which was a fairly standard practice at the time, a lot of people were doing it and there were forum posts just asking for hand histories. Full Tilt had never punished anyone for it before, it was one of those things that was technically against the rules but nobody even knew it. So Brian did do that, but he never sent those hands to me or Cole. All he did was review them himself, and then we exchanged strategy emails with him saying things he noticed, general tendencies, which is perfectly legal and within the rules.

I honestly think that the ‘game plan’ is a very overrated thing. I think it was more just me playing my game, I mean I was six tabling heads-up so I don’t really have that much time to think. It’s just a lot of playing the best way I know how to play, noticing when he starts tilting and three-betting a lot more, and then adjusting to that.

With how high variance the game is, a ten buy-in swing is not very much in pot-limit Omaha. It is only three sessions. We have probably only played a total of 5,000 hands heads-up maybe, so that’s a small sample. “ ♠

To see Diego Cordovez’s full interview with Hastings check out “The Scoop” on CardPlayerTV.com.