By Stefano Dicembre
You can do a lot with $50,000. And when you’re giving it to someone who goes by the name of xxvicelifexx, your mind does start to wonder just what the money is going to be used for. So now, after getting hold of the player who took down our latest $300K Guaranteed Sunday tournament, we can reveal exactly where the cash is going – beer! Actually, we were hoping for something more risqué.
“For now I will just enjoy a few beers, and then a few more,” said xxvicelifexx, better known as Mike Wilson from Canberra, Australia. “This is my biggest highlight, for sure, and it still hasn’t sunk in yet.”
In the money: Mike Wilson
Mike collected a massive $50,358.96 for beating 1,662 other players, a pretty impressive performance considering the 24-year-old’s fledgling poker career. He said: “Two years ago I saw some poker on TV and thought it looked interesting. So I signed up with PartyPoker and began to learn.”
Previous to Sunday’s win the security’s guard best finish was way back in 508th. “I don’t get to play the $300K Guaranteed Sunday very often because of the time difference in Australia; the tournament starts at 4.45am on a Monday when I have to get ready for work. This week we had a public holiday so I decided to try my luck in a $3 re-buy tournament the day before. Some $13 later I managed to score a seat in the big one.”
For the tournament itself, Mike said he had a strategy but it didn’t quite work. “The plan was to be patient and not try anything fancy,” he revealed. “At one stage with about 150 players left in the tournament I hit a real lean stretch where I couldn’t get any hands worth playing or any ideas I had of playing marginal hands were quickly ruined when my opponents were moving all in from early positions.
“I decided to take my chances one on one against a big raiser that everyone folded to. It was my 6,7 against A,2 and the flop produced an ace and a 6. I had pretty much given up and was out of my chair when a 7 hit on the river and suddenly I was back in. From there things went my way but I won’t forget how close I was to falling out of the tournament a lot earlier.”
And some final advice from our latest big-money winner? “There have been a lot of ups and downs, even a couple of tough stretches where I considered giving poker up altogether. But it was nothing a bit of patience and persistence didn’t fix.” Sage words.
Make sure you’re involved in our next $300K Guaranteed Sunday. Qualifiers run every day, and from as little as $3, so start playing now.
