In the $1,050 Main Event of the Ultimate Bet Online Championship (UBOC), Lauren locoenlacabeza Kling (pictured at right) finished as the runner-up to Dave doubledave22 D’Alesandro. Her reward was a $163,000 bankroll boost and bragging rights over her boyfriend, successful PocketFives.com member Mike SowersUNCC Sowers. A total of 1,307 players entered the finale of the tournament series, easily surpassing the event’s $1 million guaranteed purse. PocketFives.com sat down with Kling to recap her second place performance and rapid climb up the poker ladder.

On the heads-up battle against D’Alesandro, who began as the chip leader, Kling told PocketFives.com, “I’ve been playing a ton of heads-up sit and gos recently, so I’m really trying to improve my heads-up game. When I did get it in on the final hand, I got him to do exactly what I wanted and got it in as a huge favorite, thus I'm happy with how I played it regardless of the result.” After bleeding off chips to start the heads-up match, Kling clawed back after doubling up with A-5 against K-5. In the deciding hand, her pocket nines did not hold versus D’Alesandro’s pocket fives and she finished second. Here were the final results:
1. DOUBLEDAVE22 - $279,045 (doubledave22)
2. SUPERMODL - $163,244 (locoenlacabeza)
3. BS0228 - $115,016 (threatnasty)
4. WAWA711 - $83,648 (Wawa711)
5. MICHAELBINGER - $69,925
6. MUCKANDLOSE - $56,855 (decay)
7. DAHJINERAT - $43,131 (DahJinerat)
8. EBSCR00GE - $30,715
9. GSKI6986 - $21,566

Kling has played poker for the last five years in the live arena and only recently has begun to ramp up her online expertise. The results have been pretty impressive. Besides the UBOC Main Event six-figure payday, other scores for Kling in January include third place efforts in the Full Tilt Poker $100 rebuy for $25,000 and $1K Monday for $45,000. All told, she generated $274,000 in tournaments that are tracked for the Online Poker Rankings in January alone.

As you might expect, Sowers (pictured at left) has been a major influence on Kling’s burgeoning poker career. She told PocketFives.com, “I’ve been watching him nonstop and I’m like a sponge. I watch good people play and you have to absorb it. Any time that I have a question, I copy the hands into an e-mail and ask guys like Mike, David Doc Sands Sands, Dan djk123 Kelly, and Mark dipthrong Herm what they think and what they would have done differently. By asking more experienced players whose games are on a higher level, I am able to fix my mistakes, realize what I am doing incorrectly, and constantly improve my own game. I am very thankful to all of them for taking the time to help me improve."

Sowers finished second in the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) High Roller event in September for $448,000. He also was the runner-up in a $1,060 Full Tilt Online Poker Series (FTOPS) tournament one year ago for $221,000. On the live felts, Sowers final tabled the World Poker Tour’s (WPT) L.A. Poker Classic last February for $654,000 and grabbed fourth in a $5,000 No Limit Hold’em event during the 2009 World Series of Poker (WSOP) for another $194,000. On the advice Sowers has imparted, Kling revealed, “He’s told me that I need to put the pressure on other people instead of them putting pressure on me.”

During her freshman year at the University of California at Berkeley, her friends in the dorms thought it’d be fun to teach a female how to play poker. However, Kling caught on quickly and began dominating the game. During trips back home to Florida, Kling would travel with her dad to the Seminole Hard Rock for some “father-daughter bonding.” At Berkeley, she taught a two-credit Poker and Blackjack class.

On her teaching endeavors at the collegiate level, Kling explained, “Two seniors who were graduating and asked me to take over the class. I taught it with another engineering student. The blackjack part was primarily on the various card counting methods and the history of the game. The poker section involved a background of the different types of poker, online versus live play, the history of the game, tournaments versus cash games, and several other topics. At the end of each class, we’d have a tournament so the students could gain experience and ask me questions.” Now, Kling will test her live skills in the $5,000 PokerStars North American Poker Tour (NAPT) Venetian event from February 20th to 24th. Then, she’ll head to California for the WPT L.A. Poker Classic.

On what’s next for her in poker, Kling told us, "I am going to continue to play a lot online, improve my game, and really shoot for a win. As I continue to improve, I hope to be the one with the chip lead going into the next heads-up match I encounter. I also plan on playing more live events and would love to have a live score in the near future.” Congratulations to Kling and all PocketFives.com members who cashed in the recent UBOC series.