In recent weeks, Jonathan G4uthsGauthier (pictured) was part of a three-way chop of the PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up and bagged $68,000. It was the largest cashed we’ve tracked for the Canadian by a factor of nine and he accordingly told us, “I am feeling super good. I’ve been waiting for that kind of ship for a long time.”

Gauthier said that when two tables remained, one was stacked with regs and the other largely had inexperienced players. “Unfortunately, I was sitting at the table with the skilled players and they were putting a lot of pressure on, so I had to tighten up my game. Most of them got knocked out before the final table.” A deal was struck after elmelogno4was eliminated in fourth place after running queens into aces.

Gauthier has been camped out in Playa del Carmen, Mexico with his friend, Jonathan Poker Own U Bardier, for a month now and their rental is up in May. After that, the two Jonathans will head back to Canada or move somewhere else warm to play poker.

Bardier and Gauthier met online. “I was seeing him a lot at the tables, so one time I decided to chat a little with him,” Gauthier explained. “He was very nice and would rail my tables and comment on my play. At that time, I was playing with fournn (pictured) and we started playing with Poker Own U six months ago. fournn and I were low-stakes guys and Poker Own U kept saying that the big ship is coming.”

Big ships indeed! Two weeks before Gauthier’s Sunday Warm-Up chop for $68,000, fournn final tabled the Sunday Million and took home almost $100,000.

Gauthier got his start in poker in Boston. At the time, he was playing high school hockey and had plenty of extra time on his hands. “There were a few guys who liked to play poker,” he recalled. “At first there were four to six of them and I joined in. By the end, we would always have two tables running. At one point, we were playing almost every day and then some people got tired of playing, so we were down to five regs.”

He’d sit in the cafeteria with his laptop opened to micro-stakes games on PokerStars, but said school authorities were not pleased: “We dragged too much attention, so they blocked the site.”

After his year in Boston, he studied finance at the University of Concordia in Montreal. There, his passion for poker took off: “During my studies, I kept playing poker part-time, but playing and traveling were way more appealing to me than a regular job, so I decided to take the gamble and play full-time. I started off well, but couldn’t maintain the pace, so I decided to go back to university part-time studying international geography and geopolitics. Those really interest me.”

If you’ve ever lived in Canada, you know that winters can be bitterly cold. In fact, it’s supposed to get into the teens over the weekend in Montreal and it’s almost April. To that end, Gauthier asked Bardier (pictured) if he had ever thought about moving somewhere warm. “When winter came in December, he convinced me to move south because of the extremely cold winter in Montreal,” Gauthier said.

“For me, it was a big win-win situation,” our interview subject explained about moving to Mexico. “I took intensive Spanish lessons and want to work in relations between North and South America. I play all the time with a top player, we can practice our Spanish since he also took lessons a few years ago, and we enjoy the sun every day!”

He is over $300,000 in tracked online MTT cashes and is the #9 ranked player in Montreal, where he has his location set to. You can catch him on PokerStars under the user name Neverenough5.

Want the latest poker headlines and interviews? Follow PocketFives on Twitterand Like PocketFives on Facebook.