Recently, Corwin mig.com Mackey did something that he's really good at: dominate a tournament. This time, the 57th player on the PocketFives.com Online Poker Rankings took second in the PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up for $78,000. In just two years, Mackey has a win in a World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) event for $580,000, a victory in the Full Tilt $1K Monday for $90,000, and a World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet. Other than that, he's been pretty quiet. PocketFives.com sat down with the domain of champions to learn about his most recent big-time score.
It must be difficult to keep track of all of these five- and six-figure in the money finishes. His WCOOP win came in a $1,050 buy-in No Limit Hold'em tournament with $2 million guaranteed. Mackey pocketed a balmy $580,000, leading the 486 players who finished in the money. His $1K Monday win occurred last November. He told PocketFives.com where his latest accolade ranks among his various finishes: "It means a lot to me because I have had very poor results in the bigger $200 tournaments on PokerStars (the Warm-Up and Sunday Million). I can now look at my stats and see that I have a profit in them. Still, it's a second place instead of a win, so I rank it lower than the WCOOP and $1K."
Heads-up in the Sunday Warm-Up and even in chips, Mackey lost a huge all-in pot holding the nut straight against his opponent's two pair after the turn. The river hit one of Buton77's four outs and he scooped the pot. Still, Mackey was cheerful after the bad beat. What else would you expect from the longtime PocketFiver and author of "The Well," which received 300 replies after it was posted in December of last year. He's come a long way since his days of first playing online, commenting, "I started playing online when I was 18 and probably played full-time for one and a half years until I was 21, when I was able to enter casinos and play live."
A few months removed from his WSOP bracelet win, he logged a WCOOP bracelet. It was a fitting encore and earned him his second largest poker cash to date. On the importance of the WCOOP win, Mackey explained, "I had been a high-stakes multi-table tournament regular for a few years, so bankroll- and confidence-wise, I think I was in pretty good shape. However, winning the WCOOP allowed me to have enough money to start backing people with Ryan Daut44 Daut and Nazgul, so it ended up having a huge impact on my financial situation." Daut took down the 2007 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in the Bahamas for $1.5 million in 2007. He also made the final table and finished sixth in the 2007 Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic for $192,000.
Mackey got his start in poker by battling it out in $5 sit and go tournaments in his dorm. After seeing the WSOP hit the airwaves, he was hooked and deposited $50 online. On the moment he knew that his hobby could turn into something bigger and better, he told PocketFives.com, "The summer after my sophomore year, I decided to try and play full time to see how things went. I made $120,000 that summer, so that's when I knew I could do it." There has certainly been no signs of wear since. In the month leading up to his second place showing in the Sunday Warm-Up, Mackey generated $100,000 in earnings in tournaments that are tracked for the Rankings.
Congratulations from all of us here at PocketFives.com to Corwin mig.com Mackey on the latest feather in his cap.









