"I Have Had a Goal Since Childhood to See All Seven Continents"
In the middle of December, selinantis(pictured) final tabled the PokerStars Sunday 500 and earned $35,000. There were over 700 entrants that day and selinantis, who calls Lithuania home, finished third among them. He has over $2.1 million in career online tournament winnings and sat down with PocketFives to talk about his sixth largest cash ever.
PocketFives: Nice job on the Sunday 500 final table. How are you feeling about it?
selinantis: I am really happy about getting third in the Sunday 500. It had been a very long dry period for me since the spring. I had a terrible WSOP and did not make a comeback online until now, so I have some room to breathe. Despite that, I am quite disappointed to finish third, as it was a very unfortunate situation to get A-K to run into lasagnaaammm‘s K-K three-handed where there was not really another option for me but to get it all-in and hope he folded or I won a flip.
PocketFives: Can you talk about lasagnaaammm’s play? He is a highly successful PocketFiver.
selinantis: He has what it takes to win big tournaments. He is very aggressive and is a good thinking player. Sometimes he takes his aggression too far, but it is hard to win tournaments without spewing from time to time these days.
PocketFives: Walk us through how the tournament went in general.
selinantis: I won a big all-in at the 300/600 level to build a stack up to 50,000 when an 8 big blind stack shoved UTG. I called with Q-Q UTG+1, achen overcalled UTG+2, the big blind over-shoved for 32 big blinds with A-K, and my queens held up. After that, it was smooth sailing, putting pressure with a big stack and not meeting much resistance.
I was lucky to get pretty soft tables for a tournament like the Sunday 500. I told my friends at one point that I felt like I was playing a smaller tournament. I also was lucky to win a 75 big blind flip with A-K suited against 7-7 where my opponent was not supposed to be in that spot. Then, I managed to get a very favorable spot at the 1,500/3,000 level blind-versus-blind where we got it in for 40 big blinds each on a 7s-2h-3h board. I had A-7 against Q-7.
After that, I don’t think there were any big pots, just applying pressure, playing solid poker, and chipping up without showdown. It’s a very well structured tournament, so I had the luxury of gaining a bigger edge by playing the best I could, up until the last hand.
PocketFives: The largest cash we have tracked for you is a selinantis: I was on the top of the moon back then. It was the largest or second largest Lithuanian score online at the time, so it really boosted my confidence sky-high. I was playing heads-up sit and gos regularly back then and, right after the win, was not planning to change my daily routine. But, step by step, I started to play more tournaments because I liked them more: big prize pools and the feeling of beating all those people.
With the amount of money I won, I was able to play almost every tournament I wanted and was itching to win satellites to EPTs and other big live tournaments. So, yeah, it was a very big deal and accelerated my poker career vastly.
PocketFives: What do you do besides poker? What else interests you?
selinantis: I am a family man. I am married and my wife and I have big families with which we love to spend time. My life passion is traveling. I have had a goal since childhood to see all seven continents. I am only on three now, so I still have a lot to see. Poker has really helped me with that goal too. I play a bit of basketball and we have a Lithuanian poker stars basketball team back home.
PocketFives: When did you start playing poker?
selinantis: I started playing poker professionally during my first year at university. I was studying to become a lawyer. I managed to get my master’s degree, but did not have any law practice.
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