Netpobu4: My Motto Is Never Give Up

We thought it was an incredible achievement when we learned “mochalov13” had topped a Legend of the Week leaderboard on three separate occasions. It was something we did not think would be beaten for some time. We were wrong because Belarusian grinder “Netpobu4” went one step better by winning two leaderboards during the same week!

Netpobu4 finished in first place on both Leaderboard 1 and Leaderboard 2 last week, which resulted in $1,242 worth of Daily Legends tickets hitting his partypoker account!

1x The Warrior ticket ($215)

2x The One Shot tickets ($111 each)

5x $150 Daily Legends tickets

1x Gladiator ticket ($55)

The low-stakes superstar is 38-years-old, was born and still lives in Minsk, Belarus, and has been playing poker since as far back as 2004.

“I only play tournaments”, the double leaderboard winner told the partypoker blog. “From 2007-2010, I played in the community team BelarusPoker. They were, at the time, trying to promote poker as a sport in Belarus. Then from 2010 to 2019, I practically did not play. At the beginning of last year, I decided to return to poker. The game has changed a lot; you need to train every day.”

Netpobu4 learned about the Legend of the Week promotion via our Russian YouTube channel, where he regularly tunes into our coverage of online poker’s biggest and richest tournaments. Perhaps we will see his alias on stream in the future.

Deep runs secure top leaderboard prizes

The Legend of the Week promotion rewards players for excelling in selected Daily Legends events. Winning one of those tournaments gives you a great chance of finishing on top of a leaderboard, but it is unnecessary to do so.

“In the $2.20 leaderboard, I finished one tournament in second place and enjoyed three or four deep runs. I won a $5.50 tournament for Leaderboard 2. Again, there were several deep runs in qualifying events, too.”

Netpobu4 may be the first player to win two Legend of the Week Leaderboards in a single week, but he was pretty humble about the fact.

“It’s always nice to win, even a freeroll tournament. Now my goal is to chase another record, that of mochalov13!”

Our double champion is just happy to be able to play in some higher stakes tournaments that he would no ordinarily be bankrolled for had he not won the tickets.

“It’s just good to play. I will see how it goes.”

Running badly in big buy-in tournaments

This is not the first time Netpobu4 has been given the opportunity to play in high-stakes tournaments for free. We will let him explain why.

“I took third place on the Leaderboard 1 last week and used one ticket for a $150 buy-in PKO. I managed five knockouts for $192 and finished in 21st place for an additional $208.”

“Last year, I qualified for a big tournament from a freeroll and made it to Day 2, but busted with kings versus ace-queen all-in preflop around 30 places before the money. At the same time, I turned a freeroll into a $1,000 satellite entry where 13x $10,300 packages were up for grabs, with 14th place paying almost $7,000. I finished around 32nd after losing kings versus queens preflop.”

Here is hoping Netpobu4 runs better when he uses this latest batch of tickets.

As we were wrapping up our interview with Netpobu4, he said he wanted to dedicate his double victory to someone special.

“The promotion is just super; such promotions motivate me to play more and play better. I dedicate this and the next victories to my wife, who died in March after contracting the coronavirus, and to my 12-year-old son, who she left behind and who is worried sick about me. My motto is to never give up.”