High-stakes grinder Ben Tollerene (known on PocketFives as member Bttech86) recently appeared on Joe “ChicagoJoey” Ingram’s popular Poker Life Podcast and shared his thoughts on a variety of poker industry topics, including his views on fellow nosebleed pros Phil “Polarizing” Ivey and Viktor “isildur1” Blom.

For most, the thought of going heads up against Phil Ivey at the poker table would be a scary proposition. But for Tollerene, who is a substantial lifetime winner against the 39-year-old pro, Ivey is simply another lucrative mark.

Other high-stakes pros may also be gaining an edge on Ivey as well. In the interview, Ingram pointed out that recently, tables have been filling up whenever the world-famous pro has sat in six-max games. “The older live guys have similar qualities to their game,” said Tollerene. “It’s like they’re taking limit Hold ‘em or stud concepts and applying them to big bet games, which personally I think is pretty whack,”

Tollerene added that, “The reason that the games have been running is because of [Ivey],” but “it’s very possible that he is winning.”

The pair next turned their attention to Viktor Blom, the Swedish poker phenom who has recently been on a nearly $3 million hot streak. Ingram believes that Blom is the reason why so many high-stakes games have been running lately, and feels that if he goes bust, the games could dry out for some time.

Tollerene disagreed: “I’ve learned over the years that Viktor doesn’t go away. He finds a stake, he runs it up, he bashes someone for $500K; It seems like every couple of weeks he’s back in there and spinning it up.”

That’s the point where Tollerene normally steps in and takes the cash off Blom’s hands. “He’s like my vacuum; he spins it up and sucks it all up, then he brings it to me and it’s my job to beat him.”

But losing massive amounts of money has never been a problem for Blom, and Tollerene doesn’t think his opponent will ever refuse to play him. “That’s not what it’s about for him,” he said. “His goal is not to take the best of it and make the most sound bankroll decisions. His goal is to gamble as hard as he can against anyone who will play him.”

Tollerene describes playing over 75K hands with Blom, mostly in 2012 and 2013. Last year, Blom lost his marketing contract with Full Tilt, which Tollerene claimed to be worth around $100K per month.

“The start of the month, you go looking for him,” he said. “Generally he started by playing limit and would win a couple hundred thousand dollars. I think for a while there he was one of the best deuce players.”

While Tollerene may have an edge on Blom, he believes that the Swede is one of the most brilliant intuition players in the game. “I can’t say enough about him, he is a sick, sick player,” he said. He added that if Blom approached the game as studiously as he did, Blom would “have all the money.”

He believes that Blom is one of the most naturally talented card players in the world. He went on to say that if a new game was invented, with all the players starting with zero knowledge of it, then he would put his money on Blom figuring it out and beating at the quickest.

“The things he’s done by intuition and sheer volume and competing are amazing… His ability to figure out strategy games with no formal studying is mind blowing. He is an extremely impressive guy, in that regard.”

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