Gus Hansen and Viktor Blom Depart Full Tilt

Gus Hansen and Viktor ‘Isuldur1’ Blom’s tenure as Full Tilt sponsored pros has now drawn to a close after the site announced the players’ contract had expired and would not be renewed. Following the announcement, a Full Tilt spokesperson, explained:
“We can confirm that Full Tilt’s sponsorship of Viktor Blom and Gus Hansen has expired. We would like to wish Viktor and Gus all the best in their future endeavors.”
Apparently, Full Tilt’s decision to release Hansen and Blom was part of its overall strategy to move away from “pro-centric advertising” and, instead, focus more on the experiences of the majority of its individual players. In addition, Full Tilt started offering casino games earlier this year, and the site said is was now looking to shift its marketing focus onto this lucrative area, stating:
“Full Tilt will celebrate the excitement, fun, and intrinsic enjoyment of playing our poker, blackjack, roulette, and slots games. A new TV campaign will launch imminently, representing this new approach. There will be more news on this later in the week.”
While Gus Hansen and Viktor Blom will take solace in the fact their departure is no different to that of a number of other pros who in recent months have lost their sponsorship deals, including Joe Cada, Alex Kravchenko, Marcel Luske, Humberto Brenes, and Jose Barbero, the former Full Tilt Ambassadors may rue the legacy they have left behind.
Gus Hansen, for instance, has lost around $20 million playing high-stakes cash games on the site, making him ‘the biggest loser in online poker history.’ Meanwhile, Viktor Blom’s results have highlighted the cyclical nature of the game, and despite coming to prominence in 2009 for booking a $6 million profit against many of the game’s best online players, Blom is currently showing a roughly $3 million loss for the almost 6 years he has spent playing at Full Tilt.
Interestingly, both Hansen and Blom have confessed to not using any HUD or tracking software during play, a necessary requirement for most top online pros of today. Finally, poker is a much more competitive landscape than the one that existed just a few years ago, and as Hansen explained recently:
“You just have to be better than the others at your table. Of course, people have been getting better and better. This is not 2003 anymore, and it sure isn’t 1995.”