At the end of November, Romania’s Avram SlevinroBogdan (pictured) came out on top of the pack in the PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up. The outright win in the tournament, which saw him outlast a field of over 3,300 entrants, was worth $105,000 and he defeated fellow PokerStars member Erosss82heads-up. He is #3 in the Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca, which lies in the country’s northwest corner, and sat down with PocketFives to talk about his largest tracked cash to date.

“It feels great,” Bogdan told PocketFives. “Every Sunday win feels better because it comes so few times.” The top 495 finishers in the tournament landed in the money, with the final seven walking away with at least $10,000.

“We could have chopped heads-up,” Bogdan said, “but I felt too good and was really confident I was going to win it. Until we were heads-up, there was no talk of a deal. I was probably confident I was going to win because of the adrenaline. I was the chip leader probably five times at the final table and was last the same number of times. There were big swings of my stack, so when I got to heads-up and the tournament stopped for a deal, I really wanted more of this big action, so I told him I wasn’t going for a deal.”

His second largest score in his PocketFives profile is a win in a Full Tilt Poker FTOPS tournament three years ago for $71,000. He is $160,000 shy of recording a $1 million cash badge on PocketFives and told us what he plans on doing with the money earned from the Warm-Up: “I’m probably going to buy an apartment. I’m also considering going for some live games with the whole bankroll, but as I know myself for being a bankroll nit, this probably won’t happen.” By the way, he’ll be in search of an apartment in Cluj.

He got started in poker six years ago playing live with friends. “I was winning so often that I considered looking more online about poker,” he recalled. “Then, I found a Romanian poker site where I started playing.” He is the 37th ranked player in the Romania poker community and #1,703 worldwide, down from a high of #290 last year.

How do Romanians view poker? After all, we have nearly 1,000 registered PocketFives members who call Romania home. “People here know few things about online poker,” Bogdan relayed. “I think they see it more as a gamble than as a potential job.” Speaking of jobs, he said he’d likely be a software developer if he weren’t playing poker. “I was very fond of that career in high school. I started college and am planning to finish it.”

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