{"id":17739,"date":"2012-01-25T12:44:18","date_gmt":"2012-01-25T11:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog\/en\/?p=17739"},"modified":"2020-08-06T09:40:02","modified_gmt":"2020-08-06T09:40:02","slug":"imtheocean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog\/en\/imtheocean.html","title":{"rendered":"Catching Up and Catching Cards with Imtheocean"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Here on the Party Poker blog we love hearing stories from the virtual rail as such.<\/p>\n

Starting off this week it\u2019s lmtheoceans <\/strong>(pictured here on the right)\u00a0turn who recently won a staggering $16,000 Aussie Millions package.<\/p>\n

When we caught up with lmtheocean recently it sure seemed he was living the highlife in Mexico, in between learning to surf, working-out and writing he\u2019s turned to playing poker professionally.<\/p>\n

(PartyPoker:Dany Willis):<\/strong> Congrats on your big win, tell us when did you first start playing poker?<\/p>\n

(Imtheocean):<\/strong> Well I started to take poker seriously when I was about 18 years old. I played poker in the past, I even read a poker book or two, but it hadn’t become my passion up until that point.<\/p>\n

Mixing it up<\/h3>\n

DW: <\/strong>So tell us what kind of stakes and games do you normally play when playing online or live? Do you mainly play online poker<\/a>, live poker, or a mixture of both?<\/p>\n

ITO: <\/strong>I’m living in Mexico right now, so I’m mainly playing online. I play as high as $1k buy-in heads-up sit-n-gos, and am hoping to start grinding $2k buy-ins soon. I visit my family about once a month, and I try to play some live poker when I’m there. I play as high as $25\/$50 live.<\/p>\n

First major live event<\/h3>\n

DW: <\/strong>How about live, ever played something like a WPT, EPT, or WSOP tournament?<\/p>\n

ITO: <\/strong>No. I’m only 20 and have only been playing professionally for a couple of years so I haven’t had too many opportunities to play major live events so far in my career. I’m thrilled this will be my first major.<\/p>\n

DW: <\/strong>Okay so outside of your poker life tell us a bit more about yourself, any cool hobbies and interests?<\/p>\n

ITO: <\/strong>Since I’ve moved to Mexico, I have started to learn to surf. I’m still pretty terrible at it, but I’m hoping I’ll be ready to ride giants 6 months from now :). I love traveling. I plan on living out my dream of\u00a0traveling the entire world while playing poker for the next 5 or 6 years. I also enjoy working-out and writing.<\/p>\n

DW:<\/strong> Sounds great, so you mentioned you play professionally now, how did you get to that point?<\/p>\n

ITO: <\/strong>Well I play poker full time now. When I graduated high school at 18, my dad was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. I had planned on going to college on the east coast of the United States, but after he got sick I decided to postpone college so I could be at home with my family.<\/p>\n

After passing on school, I quickly realized that poker was my passion, and I wanted to chase my dream of becoming one of the best poker players in the world. I remember telling my dad, and he was furious with me.<\/p>\n

Looking back, I know it was much less anger he was expressing and more so fear that I was going to throw my life away chasing a pipe-dream. Sadly, my dad passed away before he got to see me start to excel at poker. It kills me that he might have died worrying that I might wind up being a total screw-up in life. I like to think he checks in on me and the family every now and again from heaven, and gets to see that we’re all doing well.<\/p>\n

Poker Idols<\/h3>\n

DW: <\/strong>Well tell us then who are some of your favourite professional poker players?<\/p>\n

ITO: <\/strong>There are a lot of less famous poker player’s out there who I would call my favorite’s, because they did so much to help me to get to where I am. Jon ‘Croixdawg’ Ford staked and coached me when I was first getting started, and without him I have no idea where I’d be right now.<\/p>\n

I’m a fan of Phil Galfond, Tom Dwan, and Olivier Busquet. Galfond just seems like a great guy, and I learned a lot from watching his training videos. Dwan has been part of some of the coolest tv hands ever to air, and he’s a great ambassador for the game. He’s also the face of the internet generation, and watching him play provides a great illustration to how winning poker strategy has evolved into what it is today. Olivier Busquet is the godfather of heads-up sit-n-gos. In addition to being a great ambassador for the game, he’s also the best husng player in the world and he pushes guy’s like me to be better. I wouldn’t be scared to play with anyone, but I don’t like having to play Olivier, and I’m sure I wouldn’t be too happy to have Galfond or Dwan at my table. They’re all amazing.<\/p>\n

The Ultimate Question<\/h3>\n

DW: <\/strong>Okay lets play that fun hypothetical game called \u201cWinning Big\u201d, you\u2019ve won a big live event what is the first thing you’d buy with the prize money?<\/p>\n

ITO:<\/strong> I’m not planning on settling down anytime in the near future, so I probably wouldn’t buy a house, car, or anything like that. I would definitely, use a fraction of that money and continue to travel and explore the world. I would also donate a good chunk to my church. The rest of the money, however, would likely go right into my poker bankroll. I plan on continuing to climb limits, until I honestly believe no matter how hard I work I can’t be good enough to win at a certain level.<\/p>\n

DW: <\/strong>How about you let us in on how you ended up winning this promotion?<\/p>\n

ITO: <\/strong>I had decided a couple of days prior to playing the Aussie Millions qualifier that I wanted to put more of an effort into trying to win satellites to live events. I had actually played a qualifier the night before where first prize was guaranteed to trip to Seoul to play in an APPT main event. I was fortunate enough to get to heads-up where obviously I felt like I was pushing a pretty big edge. Unfortunately, it was one of those heads-up matches where everything goes wrong, and I busted the tournament in second. Truthfully, I almost started to cry I was so upset that I came so close, and then lost it in heads-up of all ways.<\/p>\n

Maybe it was for the best though, as I found redemption in winning the Aussie Millions qualifier the next day. Funny, when we got heads up in the Aussie Millions qualifier, I had a 3:1 chip lead, and the guy I was playing had very little heads-up experience. I ended up losing my huge chip advantage, and even coughed up the lead at one point though. I’m really thankful that I was able to keep my composure and hold when we got it in with my 2 pair vs his pair plus nut flush draw.<\/p>\n

Party Time!<\/h3>\n

DW:<\/strong> So how\u2019d you celebrate your victory?<\/p>\n

ITO: <\/strong>During heads-up of the quallifier, my 3 roommates were huddled around the computer with me sweating the action. One of my roommates also had 4 other guys on a skype conference call. My headphones were on the whole time, and I was blaring music to try to block out all the chat circling around me.<\/p>\n

When I won, there were just cheers all throughout the condo, coming from myself, my roommates, and from the computer speakers. I called my mom and my brothers and sisters. I hopped on Facebook, and messaged some buddies. After that though, I went right back to grinding lol. I think I managed to squeeze out a couple thousand in profit not including the Aussie Millions qualifier win that day, so all in all I would call it a pretty solid day of poker :)<\/p>\n

DW: <\/strong>Thanks for your time Imtheocean, and good luck at the Aussie Millions. And there we have it folks, a few good tales for us all to learn from, chasing his dreams sure seems to be paying off for Imtheocean.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here on the Party Poker blog we love hearing stories from the virtual rail as such. Starting off this week it\u2019s lmtheoceans (pictured here on the right)\u00a0turn who recently won a staggering $16,000 Aussie Millions package. When we caught up with lmtheocean recently it sure seemed he was living the highlife in Mexico, in between<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":30586,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2182,300],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17739"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17739"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90322,"href":"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17739\/revisions\/90322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17739"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=17739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}