Life in Lithuania (pictured) is apparently pretty easy. You wake up, finish fourth in the PokerStars Sunday Millionfor $80,000, grapple, do some MMA, and go to bed. Such is the routine of VelniaZ, who final tabled the Sunday Million earlier this month for $80,000 and now sits at #14 in the PocketFives Poker Rankings in his home country.

“It’s definitely a bittersweet feeling,” VelniaZ said of finishing fourth. “It’s my biggest score and I’m very happy about it, but I could not help but feel I could have played better and made fewer mistakes.”

He was largely short-stacked until a dozen players remained and “knew I needed to make a push if I wanted to contend for bigger prizes, but with a lot of luck, I was able to come into the final table second in chips. The final table started very well, as I picked up good hands and got action. However, with five people left, I got into a big pot with another big stack where I tried to semi-bluff on the flop and turn with Q-7 suited versus K-Q offsuit. Unfortunately, the flush didn’t come.”

He proceeded to call off 18 big blinds with A-5 offsuit against A-3 and dropped even further after the weaker hand drew out. He ultimately went out with A-6. Nevertheless, the score enamored his friends and family, as he relived, “It was a huge surprise and nobody could believe that it was possible to win that much money in one day. I had to explain to them that this is a once-in-a-year type of opportunity if you are very lucky.”

He started playing poker four years ago in college when he saw his roommate playing online. “It hooked me right away,” he recollected. “After changing universities and moving to the United Kingdom, poker helped me support myself throughout my studies. For the first two or three years, I was strictly a cash game player, first No Limit Hold’em and then Pot Limit Omaha. But, I decided to try tournaments and had better results, so I stuck to them.”

VelniaZ has played full-time for the last year and said if he weren’t playing poker, he likely would have remained in the UK and tried to find a job. Aside from the game, his “biggest passion” is training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and he has recently gravitated toward MMA. On the latter, he explained, “I was a huge UFC fan for many years and wanted to try it really badly, so a buddy and I went to a gym and tried it out.”

This up-and-coming player also has a second place finish in the PokerStars Big $11 for $10,000, his second largest tracked cash to date. He joined PocketFives in the first month of this year and his average in the money finish for the Rankings is $232.

He wanted to extend a shout out to his friends and family in Vilnius and the Lithuania pokercommunity as a whole, which has been “doing incredibly well lately.” The poker contingent in the Eastern European country is nearly 500 PocketFivers strong, who together have amassed nearly $30 million in tracked online MTT earnings lifetime, including $3.6 million in the last three months. Lithuania is #19 worldwide in the PocketFives Country Poker Rankings.

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