Every year we send some of the finest poker players all the way to the other side of the world, well for most of them it is, to play in what has become one of the highlights of the international poker calendar.
Ten Years In Poker
The Aussie Millions is now in its tenth year and it’s bigger and better than ever before. So what’s on the minds of these hopefuls that we send to Melbourne in order to battle it out on the felt in the hope of being crowned the champion of Poker? Well last week I managed to catch up with a few of them to hear
Meet Dejan Pustoslemsek
Dejan started playing poker 4 years ago and he’s a fan of shorthanded action, since winning his prize he’s turned into something of a bookworm:
Dany I’m actually a cash game player and tournaments aren’t really my strength, so that’s why I’m currently studying several books on advanced tournament skill-sets.
Okay good luck with that, so what do you do in between your poker sessions?
Well I like to play football drive motorbike and skiing in the winter.
And is poker a full time job for you or a lucrative hobby?
Well i started a computer science degree over 4 years ago, but then i met poker and well I kind of forget about school :)
OK, well I’m not going down that road, so how about you just tell me about your deepest poker fears, who would you be most scared to see at your table? Maybe you get stuck between Ivey and Hellmuth perhaps?
Nope, no fears and no hopes I aim to only play my best poker.
Well that’s some tough talk there buddy, alright so you defeat the two Phils by knocking them out simultaneously in the longest 3 way we’ve ever seen and I’ve seen a few believe me, just tell me what is the first thing you’d buy with the prize money?
Lol well it would be a nice financial problem to have ..but I don’t want think too much about that.
Alright but it could be a real problem you may face so just remember me okay.
Next up Marek Uharček
How you doing Marek? All rested and ready to go?
Hi Dany! Yes I am doing well, have been travelling the last 2 weeks. After I won the package i decided to see a bit of this part of the world, so i have been to Sydney for couple of days and New Zealand so i should be rested :-)
Let’s get started as I know you’re a busy guy, first things first how’d you get in to poker?
Well I started to play poker back in 2008, when I was just 23 years old and was in the last year of my Economics study. I didn’t take it very seriously, it was just for fun and I didn’t have much success. Then I started to watch a TV show called High Stakes Poker and I got “addicted” to the game.
But you seem to do okay out it right?
Well put it like this nowadays i would say i play 70% live and 30% online. My favourite game is PLO. Online I play PLO100 and PLO200, live i play everything up to 5-10.
So what are your experiences tournament wise? is it your strong suit or?
No I play mainly cash games and I’m not really experienced in tournaments. I played some smaller tournaments live with mediocre results but I only played 2 bigger tournaments and fortunately finished ITM in both of them (WPT Legends Of Poker 2011 in Los Angeles and WPT Borgata 2012 in Atlantic City). Since i won this tournament seat in a satelite and is kind of a freeroll now, my main goal is to finish ITM and then take it from there.
Tell us about a few favorite players, maybe you’ll get to meet or ven play against?
My favorite poker player is Phil Galfond. I’m not hoping to sit with any big names at the table (im hoping the opposite), but would like to some of the big players (Ivey, Antonius, Negreanu, Dwan)
And if you do well?
The first thing i would buy is a first class flight ticket back home, because its an over 20 hours flight and flying in the economy is very uncomfortable.
