The month of October has been a good one for long-time PocketFiver Scott SCTrojans Freeman. On October 14th, he won the Super Tuesday on PokerStars for $78,000 and, one week later, re-entered the PocketFives.com Online Poker Rankings. At one point last year, he was ranked as high as second and won three coveted Triple Crowns in May of 2007. Freeman has since eased back on his time spent playing and consequently dropped out of the Rankings. He re-entered at #100 this week. PocketFives.com caught up to this once high-volume grinder to understand his new approach to the game.

Many remember Freeman’s deep run in the 2007 World Series of Poker Main Event. The Los Angeles native finished 19th out of 6,358 players, pocketing $333,490. Two months prior, he won three Triple Crowns and was one of the most recognizable names in the online poker world. Near the end of 2007, Freeman finished 37th in the North American Poker Championship on the World Poker Tour, cashing for $19,000.

However, after conclusion of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in January of 2008, Freeman decided that it was time for a break. He told PocketFives.com, “I didn’t play any poker from January until the World Series in June. I was just a little burned out. I wasn’t even running badly. I had won the $200 rebuy in December. I just had so much fun at the PCA doing non poker-related things and wanted a break.”

During his layoff, he commented that it was a lot of late mornings and hanging out with friends, a far different lifestyle than a man who could typically be found playing over 30 tournaments per day: “I don’t really know what I was trying to accomplish. It wasn’t really one of those ‘take time off in order to get your desire back’ things. I just didn’t want to play, so I didn’t play.”

Freeman’s time away from the game came to an end just before the 2008 World Series of Poker. Judging by the results of this year’s tournament series, a break seemed to do wonders. Freeman finished ninth in a $5,000 No Limit Hold’em event for $68,000 and then finished fourth in a $1,000 rebuy tournament for $223,000. In late July, he won the $55 buy-in Nightly Seventy Grand on PokerStars for $14,300 and also took down the $320 buy-in $50,000 Guaranteed on Stars for $19,000.

Despite his recent success, Freeman will head back to school in January, pursuing a Bachelors degree in business with a concentration in operations. He told us, “I’d absolutely love to get involved in casino operations.” He’s weaned back on his hours put into poker, playing just two to three days per week in the same room as friends. His mindset regarding poker as income has also changed: “I try not to ever make any decision especially in poker based entirely or even a little bit based on money. That’s what will drive you insane. For example, you will begin to think hypothetically on any given day of the week, you can have $5,000 in buy-ins. Even for a MTT player with a 50% ROI, that’s $2,500 in equity. You will kill yourself if you think, ‘not playing will cost me $2,500’ or something like that. You just can’t let the money dictate what you do, in my opinion. The money will come.”

Despite his recent emergence back into the PocketFives.com Rankings, he noted that the accolade isn’t a top priority for him like it once was: “I can’t ever imagine myself playing as much as I used to ever again. If I run like djk123 or AJKHoosier1 for six months, I may get there just based purely on that, but I can't put in that kind of volume.”

In a critical hand on the final table bubble in his Super Tuesday victory, Freeman won a 45 big blind pot when his pocket fours held in a coin flip against A-J. The hand gave him ample chips for the rest of the tournament. When he won, he described what went through his head: “I was obviously excited and, I’m not going to lie, I had a little bit of the ‘it’s about time’ go through my head. I hadn’t been running so hot and I felt like I had been playing really well excluding my tilt sessions.”

Welcome back to the rankings, SCTrojans! Check out the PocketFives.com Online Poker Rankings for this week's top 100 online tournament players.



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