After coming off what he calls a “lazy” 2014, Dutch grinder Martijn “‘Quadchrazs” Ardon (pictured) has become the first to hit Supernova Elite at PokerStars this year, and at the same time, has broken the all-time record for the fastest to ever achieve the status. He officially achieved the milestone on February 21.

Ardon, 24, told the PokerStars Blog that he hadn’t set out to break the record, but after starting the year off strong, he decided to go for it. “I wanted to work hard in 2015,” he said. “That kind of spiraled into three really big days at the start of the year. It then became apparent I was first on the leaderboard and I wanted to keep it that way. I looked up the VPP record and decided to go for it, as I felt I was still playing fine.”

So how does one earn 1 million VPPs in less than two months? Ardon’s game of choice is $100 buy-in sit and gos, a limit at which VPPs can be earned at a fast clip. He went on to detail his grueling playing schedule: “My standard day was getting up at between 12pm and 2pm and getting to sleep between 4am and 6am,” he said. “I would usually do four three-hour sessions a day depending on the action. I played Six-Max Hypers mostly.”

During his waking hours, he would play a mind-boggling 1,000 sit and gos per day on average, sometimes earning 35,000 VPPs during his daily sessions. He kept up that punishing regime for 52 days. “Ideally, I would have wanted to quit after 40 days or so,” he said. “The games were really hard at some point in February because PokerStars was doing that Ultimate promotion, which caused a lot of good players to make a lot of extra hours.”

Astonishingly, Ardon hadn’t expected that his stunning achievement would take as long as it did. But after falling ill with the flu, he was forced to take a break from the tables. “I intended to reach it February 15,” he revealed. “But I got stomach flu, so had to do some smaller VPP days at some point.”

Sickness aside, Ardon was still able to smash the previous record, held by Andrew “azntracker” Li (pictured), by a solid week. Even PokerStars’ staff was stunned by the quickness with which Ardon claimed Supernova Elite status. “I cannot see how this can be beaten,” said PokerStars VIP Program Manager Gareth Davies. “It must have been like Groundhog Day.”

When asked if he ever got bored playing the same game day after day, Ardon replied, “If you think sit and gos are boring, you miss a lot of important stuff to take into account!”

Ardon isn’t sure if he’ll continue playing $100 sit and gos for the remainder of the year. With the pressure off, he says that he’ll be able to play fewer tables and experiment with other game types like full ring and heads-up. But with someone so committed to the grind, it wouldn’t be a shock to see Ardon slip right back into his arduous schedule.

“It is a very good feeling if you set the bar really high and reach something hard to actually achieve, whatever it may be,” he said. “For me, it was to get Supernova Elite as fast as possible while still playing on a good level. I’m very happy I finished it while I could.”

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