Players who enjoy logic-driven, strategy-based games like chess typically have a leg up at poker. Another player who fits that mold is Hungary’s ‘Ballage87‘, who not only enjoys strategy games, but also figured out he could make money playing them.

In November, ‘Ballage87’ won the PartyPoker Heavyweight Main Eventfor $24,000. He is a man of volume, and despite having $826,000 in career online tournament winnings, the Heavyweight victory was his largest single score to date. There were 1,608 entrants in the PartyPoker tournament and ‘Ballage87’ defeated ‘RASMEDBUR‘ heads-up.

“I am feeling great about it. This is my new highest score and it came at the right time, so I’m glad I took it down,” said ‘Ballage87’.

‘Ballage87’ rode an average stack for much of the Heavyweight. In the money, however, he won a massive pot as an 80% favorite. “I then had to make a tough laydown, but grinded back to become one of the top three stacks and was near the top of the leaderboard for the rest of the time,” said ‘Ballage87’. “I started the final table with a huge stack and had luck with my position too.”

When he won the Heavyweight, he had only been playing on PartyPoker for a couple of weeks. The Hungarian said that he’ll be firing up even more tables on PartyPoker down the road: “I really like their MTT structure in general. They have deep starting stacks and this particular tournament had 15-minute blind levels, so it was very playable.” He plays as ‘r1bbon‘ on Party.

The man with a picture of Ryan Gosling in his PocketFives profile had a landmark 2015. All of his eight largest career scores came last year and he has consequently leaped to #83 worldwide in the PocketFives Rankings, his highest position ever.

‘Ballage87’s’ PocketFives profile, showing 6,000 in career scores

Part of the reason for his success might have been a jump in stakes.

“I feel more comfortable at the higher limits. The hard work what I put it seems to be paying off somehow and I definitely have the ambition to reach higher levels and maybe play some live tournaments as well,” said ‘Ballage87’.

In case you’re wondering, ‘Ballage87’ decided to play higher stakes in the first place at the urging of his coaches. He had primarily been focusing on sit and gos and turbo MTTs until that point.

“My coaches realized that me moving up in stakes was probably going to be +EV, even with bigger variances,” said ‘Ballage87’. “Plus, I had the ambition to step up another level. The bigger prize pools and final tables are what keeps MTT players going. You get more adrenaline.”

‘Ballage87′ started his poker career playing Hold’em in high school. In college, online poker began to grow leaps and bounds and so he began firing up the virtual felts. “I was glad if I won anything, but I didn’t take it too seriously. I didn’t know much about the math and variance behind the game,” said ‘Ballage87’ “I played more and more and at some point I chose poker over college because I couldn’t do both at the same time with much success.”

He added that poker matched his love of strategy and logic games like chess.

“I think I am good at those types of games, so I find poker really interesting. Plus, I figured out that I could also make money with it, so why not?”

‘Ballage87’ is the second-ranked player in the Hungary poker community. The group on PocketFives is 1,644 members strong and has total career winnings of $106 million, $3.7 million of which has come in the last three months. ‘Ballage87’ owns almost 2,600 in the money finishes in online tournaments.

Away from poker, ‘Ballage87’ plays and watches tennis. He plans to travel and party more in 2016 as a result of his success and wanted thank PPB Staking for their impact on his game over the years.