With over 19 cashes in Nevada on Ultimate Poker totaling $9,700, including three first place finishes in a row in the Nightly $2,500, and with nine cashes on WSOP.comfor over $2,100, who can deny that luckisreal? And that’s for just the first two months of 2014! He ended 2013 with results almost equal to what he has to date this year.

Aaron Schoch (pictured) plays on WSOP.com and Ultimate Poker as luckisreal and can also be found on Twitter under the handle @_luckisreal. He currently lives in Reno, Nevada and has been playing online since 2004.

PocketFives: We understand your nickname luckisreal came about while playing poker in Detroit. Tell us about that.

Aaron Schoch: That summer at Motor City is when my luckisreal player name was born. I smoked at the time and during one of my breaks, a guy from my table approached me and gave me some advice. He told me that he has been playing poker for a long time and learned over the years that “luck is real.”

For example, when he sits down at a table, he watches to see which player is winning the most pots. Once he knows that, he offers the player money to switch seats (sometimes as much as a full buy-in), so he can sit in the “lucky seat.” He also had similar superstitious advice on tipping the dealers and asking for setups. On the drive home, I told my friend about this guy and “luck is real” became our inside joke.

PocketFives: How long have you been playing online poker?

Aaron Schoch: I’ve been playing online poker off and on for about ten years. I started on PartyPoker and have played on about a dozen different sites since then. Luckily, Black Friday didn’t affect me. I was busy finishing up my Bachelor’s degree in Accounting and wasn’t playing any poker at the time.

I started playing on Ultimate Poker in June and WSOP in September. About 75% of my time is spent on UP due to the STT and MTT traffic. I prefer UP’s customer support and tournament schedule, but prefer WSOP’s software and ACH cashouts. I have no complaints about either site. Of course, more traffic would be nice, but that might take some time. It would be great if they could merge the New Jersey and Nevada player pools, but I’m sure that has something to do with governments and bureaucracy.

I generally play 30 to 40 hours a week, mostly in the evenings, and, of course, all day on Sunday.

PocketFives: What is your biggest cash to date?

Aaron Schoch: I’ve had a bunch of cashes in the $1,000 to $10,000 range, both live and online. Nothing notable yet, but I’ve really only played a few large tournaments. Though, I will be taking a few shots at the Rio this summer. We’ll see how well I can run.

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