Earlier this month, 3,342 entrants showed up for the weekly PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up, which meant a prize pool of $607,000. Muscling his way to second place was Germany’s orhi83, who cashed for $78,000, the largest score of his career and his biggest haul since a $64,000 take in the Super Tuesday in 2013.

“I’m feeling pretty good,” orhi83 told PocketFives. “I am a lıttle bıt sad about second place, though, as I hoped to be first, but it’s my biggest score, so I am very happy about it. I was down to 5,000 in chips in the beginning, but after that, everything went pretty smoothly.”

He is up to a healthy $685,000 in online tournament winnings across 563 in the money finishes, an average of $1,217 each. He is the top-ranked PocketFiver in Hessen, Germany and said he’ll use his newfound bankroll to continue grinding and “hopefully not lose it all back.” He was also eyeing a few live events in Europe, including the Eureka/EPT stop in Prague in December.

Third place in the Sunday Warm-Up that week went to Finland’s gifuhorna, who is #4 in his home country. “He played very well and was really solid,” orhi83 said of the third place finisher. “I doubled him up three-handed with 6-6 against 7-7, but in the end, he busted against the winner with A-10 against A-Q.” gifuhorna ended up cashing for $55,000, pushing his career total to just south of $2.5 million.

We have almost 1,000 members from Germany who have registered PLB scores, but orhi83 indicated that locals are sometimes confused when he tells them he plays poker for real money. He surmised, “In general, I think poker is not accepted very much here.” The Germany pokercommunity is #13 in the PocketFives Country Poker Rankings with a combined PLB score of its top 20 members of 79,539 points.

orhi83 got started in poker through home games with friends before migrating to online poker. During the week, he is employed at a chemical firm and said, “It’s sometimes hard because of my schedule, but I always try to play on Sunday and Tuesday.” Over the years, he has final tabled the Sunday Brawl, Sunday Warm-Up, Super Tuesday, Sunday Second Chance, and $109 Rebuy, just to name a few.

The Sunday Warm-Up runs weekly on PokerStars. If you don’t already have a PokerStars account, sign up through the links on PocketFives to get a 100% up to $600 deposit bonus and one free month of Tournament Poker Edge or CardRunners poker training. Get started here.

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