Two weeks ago, Alexander Ivanov (pictured), who is known as s3c3on PocketFives, finished in second place in the Full Tilt Sunday Major, a $215 Re-Entry tournament, for $30,000. There were nearly 900 entrants and Ivanov, who calls Russia home, booked his second largest cash to date.

“I feel great,” Ivanov said of his win. “It was a strong group at the final table, so it was nice to beat a lot of good players.” He told PocketFives he hit several big hands, including besting Tom hitthehole Middleton with aces against kings, and remained in the top 10 on the leaderboard from the money bubble all the way until the final table. He was the smallest stack when the final nine began, but busted two opponents to vault into second place.

“I don’t think this result will change anything,” the Russian admitted. “I won a MiniFTOPS event for $50,000 in January 2013 and had five or six final tables on PokerStars around the same time, so for me it’ll mean a big push for further development in poker and of course a good bankroll.” You can regularly find him playing online during the weekends, as he is not a daily grinder.

When he’s not playing poker, Ivanov works as a managing director for a digital advertising company. He said of his work-poker balance, “The job gives me an opportunity to play with the best players in high-stakes MTTs, which helps me play better and better.” As such, he tends to limit his action to Sunday Majors and series like the WCOOP and FTOPS.

Ivanov got his start in the game four years ago in freerolls and low-limit games on Full Tilt. He started playing more regularly on weekends about two-and-a-half years ago and told us, “Online poker is good practice for offline series. It keeps me in good form. Right now, poker is more a hobby for me, but I really want to develop and get better.”

Why would Ivanov be so interested in fine-tuning his game for the live arena? What about live poker is so appealing? “I don’t know exactly,” he admitted. “I do know that for now it’s not realistic to play poker full-time.I have a great job and a big family. Any further steps will be based on getting results and stabilizing my ROI.” He added, “Hopefully my next interview will be after winning the WCOOP Main Event or something like that.” Time will tell!

We should probably take this opportunity to point out that the Russia poker community is over 1,500 PocketFives members strong. The group has combined for $144 million in winnings all-time and $13.4 million in the last three months.

The Sunday Major runs weekly on Full Tilt. Sign up for Full Tilt through the links on PocketFives to get a 100% up to $600 deposit bonus and one free month of PocketFives Training with no sign-up fee. Click here to get started.

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