Isidur1 Loses $41k To Haxton In Superstar Showdown

In  joining Team PokerStars Pro, Isildur1 agreed to take part in a series of challenges on the site called the SuperStar Showdown.
Well, yesterday the first of Isildur1’s challengers, Isaac “philivey2694” Haxton, stepped up and played 2,500 hands of $50/$100 heads-up across four tables against him and by the time the dust had settled Haxton had clinched a win, not to mention a $41,700 profit.
As an army of railbirds settled back to watch the highly anticipated heads-up challenge, the two opponents had bought in for $10,000 on each table and were committed to playing either 2,500 hands or a $150,000 stop/loss depending on which came first.
By the time 372 hands had been played, Isildur1 held a $11,650 lead, but things started to go unstuck for the Swede following a pre-flop raising war which saw Haxton getting his whole $10,100 stack all-in holding Qs-Js to Isildur1’s pocket jacks. The flop ran out T-9-4 and a K on the river then handed Haxton the straight to reduce Isildur1’s lead to just $316 after 536 hands.
Despite Isildur1 then being $16,500 behind by hand 820, the Swede then managed to win a series of pots, including one worth $34,300, and another $23,000 when the duo went all-in pre-flop with Haxton holding pocket 9’s to Isildur1’s Ac-Qc. Isildur1 made a straight on the K-J-T flop and with less than a 1,000 hands to play was up a significant $31,099.
Alas for Isildur1 the tide began to turn sharply and after losing several pots, including a failed all-in bluff on a 3-5-A-Q-7 board holding 4-3 to Haxton’s two pair, Isildur1 was soon down to a mere $1,299 lead and then $10,151 behind with 471 hands to play.
It was at this point Isildur1 went into hyper-aggression mode, often 5-betting instead of 3-betting Haxton’s opening min-raises, and full pot continuation betting instead of his previous two-thirds amount.
As Isildur1 continued to haemorrhage money and lose several mid-range pots, the final damage of the session ended with Isidur1 holding J-9 to Haxton’s K-9. With the board falling 5-9-3-2-2 Isildur1 lead the betting eventually shoving on the river only to lose the monster pot worth $44,464.
However, the good news for Isildur1 was that he agreed with no side action losses as a result of the match and so was only stuck the $41,701 he conceded to Haxton.