By August Darnell | March 17, 2010

Full Tilt Poker pro and CardRunners instructor Brian Hastings must love the mysterious Swedish online poker money machine “Isildur1.”  Having already taken a few million from Isildur1 last year, Hastings was back at it again Monday night, relieving his opponent of another large chunk of change.

The two six-tabled $500/$1,000 Pot-Limit Omaha heads-up against each other on Full Tilt, amassing 2,776 hands.  When the smoke cleared, Hastings was up $1,445,177.

While there were obviously many large pots, we will go over the most significant of them.  With a just a tad fewer chips than Isildur1, Hastings made a standard raise pre-flop to $3,000.  Isildur1 three-bet it up to $9,000, Hastings re-raised to $27,000, and Isildur1 made it a hefty $81,000.  Hastings called, making the pot $162,000 before any community cards were even seen.  After an all Diamond flop of J-9-5, Isildur1 potted, which would put Hastings all-in should he call.  Hastings did just that, pushing the last of his $161,986 at that table in the middle with a click of his mouse.  Surprisingly, when the cards were turned over, neither player had a flush or even a flush draw.  Hastings had a very strong straight draw, holding K-Q-T-9, while Isildur1 held A-J-9-7 for top two pair. The turn was a 5 and the river was an Ace, allowing Isildur1 to avoid all of Hastings’ draws and win the pot worth approximately $486,000.

So, at least for a while, it wasn’t all bad for Isildur1.

Many of you may remember that just three months ago, Hastings beat Isildur1 senseless at the same Full Tilt Poker $500/$1,000 Pot-Limit Omaha heads-up tables.  Through skillful play and a few lucky river cards, Hastings won $4.2 million from Isildur1.  Depending on the high stakes database, this number could be as “low” as $3.2 million, but Hastings himself wrote in his blog, “Wow. I just had the biggest winning day in online poker history. Did this really happen…here I am, winning a record $4.18 million in one day (well not exactly — no I didn’t have 100% of my own action, and no I am not going into any further detail about this) playing online poker.”

Unfortunately for Hastings, the win did bring along with it some controversy.

In an interview with ESPN.com’s Gary Wise, Hastings did what he thought was a good thing and applauded his friend and fellow Full Tilt pro and CardRunners instructor, Brian “sbrugby” Townsend, saying, “Obviously I’m happy and I’ll take it, but Brian [Townsend] did a ton of work. The three of us discussed a ton of hands and the reports that Brian made, so I’m very thankful to him and to Cole (South) as well.”

The problem with this is what they did was against the Terms and Conditions of Full Tilt Poker.  Full Tilt’s rules state, “Players are not permitted to use the hand histories for hands that they have not personally participated in,” and example of which is “exchanging hand histories with a friend.”

Townsend later admitted to gathering 30,000 hand histories involving Isildur1 from hands in which he did not participate, combining them with the 20,000 he personally had on Isildur1, analyzing the resulting database, and discussing his findings with both Hastings and Cole South.  He agreed that he did violate Full Tilt’s rules, but also said that neither he nor his friends shared hands in which mucked cards were shown (these cards would only be visible to someone who played in the hand).  He took responsibility for his actions and accepted a one-month removal of his “red pro” status by Full Tilt, but was adamant that the discussion of strategy, because it was done away from the tables, was allowable.

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