You have to love the advice that GoGooseGo(pictured), whose goes by Paul, gave to his fellow regs on PocketFives: “Never work on your game. You just have bad luck!” All kidding aside, Paul final tabled the PokerStars Sunday $100 Rebuy last month, cashing for $23,000 following a fourth place finish. He is on the cusp of breaking $900,000 in tracked scores.

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“$23,000 is not a bad result for a Sunday tournament,” Paul told us, “but every poker player wants to win a tournament, not finish fourth.” The fourth place finish marked his first ever Sunday $100 Rebuy final table and his third largest tracked score to date.

He had a big stack throughout the tournament and became chip leader in a hand in which he raised with aces and got two callers, one of whom had 7-6. His bullets held and he called the hand “a defining moment.”

As far as the money goes, Paul’s wife plans to make repairs to the kitchen and hallway in the couple’s house. “She plans to put down tile and laminate flooring,” he said. By the way, you can find him on PokerStars and Full Tiltunder the screen name He3HaiKa.

He got started in poker through a free $50 offer and his early games included $5 and $10 sit and gos on iPoker until he “accidentally” entered an MTT. He wound up winning the third MTT he registered for and has never looked back.

In mid-2012, he cashed for $62,000 after taking second in the PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up. He described 2012 as “the best time for me as a professional poker player. That Sunday Warm-Up second place was the best result I’ve had, but the entire year was really awesome. My girlfriend and I traveled a lot. I went to ten countries that until then I had never been and played poker on several continents. Generally, during that year, everything went perfectly.”

The largest cash PocketFives tracked for Paul in 2013 was a $17,000 hit for placing second in thePokerStars $109 No Limit Hold’em Turbo 2X Chance. On his 2013, Paul told us, “Last year was hard for me because my worst downswing occurred while we were spending a lot of money as a family: we bought a new car, had a wedding, and had other related costs to start a family. Apparently, all of the events in real life did not allow me to play my best game.”

Paul is part of the Russia poker community here on PocketFives, which has 1,329 members. The group has combined for $121 million in career earnings, including $13.6 million in the last three months. Our interview subject is Russia’s 48th ranked player.

The Sunday $100 Rebuy runs weekly on PokerStars. If you don’t already have a PokerStars account, sign up through PocketFives’ link and make a deposit to get one free month of PocketFives MTT Training. You’ll also get a 100% up to $600 sign-up bonus. Click here for PocketFives’ PokerStars link.

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