Recently, the nation of Serbia rejoiced as one of its own, Veljko Cocic(pictured), took down a Triple Crown. We believe he is the first Triple Crown winner that Serbia has produced, which makes for a very special occasion. Cocic took down a $2,100 side bet in the process as well, telling us, “I am active on the biggest Serbian forum and haven’t played MTTs the past few months because I have a few students and was busy with them. So, I created this challenge to see what I am capable of.”

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What he was capable of was a Triple Crown in the span of two days.

On January 15, he blasted through the field of the Full Tilt Poker $16,500 Guaranteed and walked off with $4,600. The next day, he took down the PokerStars $12,000 Guaranteedand PartyPoker $55 Rebuy for a combined windfall of $13,000.

The Full Tilt leg of his Triple Crown featured a firing squad of PocketFivers that included PokerKaiserand p0cket00. Still, he managed to outlast the heavy-hitters and log Leg 1. Leg 3 saw him overcome losing six coin flips during heads-up play to pull out a victory. He told us, “I got a big stack at the final table of the $55 Rebuy during full ring play, but lost a few hands and so my stack was below average. When the game was more shorthanded, I started to dominate again. When three players remained, I was again the chip leader. In the end, I managed to win. I was so patient and really wanted to win.”

Naturally, we asked how it felt to win one for his home country of Serbia (pictured). After all, this is the first interview this author can recall doing with a Serbian player: “It’s so unreal. I am really happy that I managed to do this for our community. Poker here is still developing and I hope my win will motivate other players to do the same thing.”

“The game is growing every day,” Cocic said of the Serbia poker community. “We started a forum three years ago. We don’t have too many players, but we all work hard and the results have started to show up. We have players who grind cash games and MTTs, some at big limits.”

He continued, “The live scene in Serbia has also developed. We have started to hold some international tournaments with high buy-ins, but again everything is still new. Last year, we started a staking and coaching group and it has shown very good results. Also, we have a few good live MTT players who have already shown their skills on the live scene in Europe and around the world.”

How big can poker get in Serbia? The top PLB score in the nation belongs to mican_ludi(pictured) at over 2,300 points and three players have over 2,000. “We are a small country,” Cocic said, “but we are good at games and sports, so I have big expectations for us. We will keep promoting poker as a game of skill and hope that one day our country can become a big part of the world poker scene. I am really looking forward to that.”

To show how enthusiastic Cocic was about his Triple Crown, he Private Messaged this author about the side bet, which was worth $2,100. He alluded to the fact that he’d be open for a prop bet on a second Triple Crown, so maybe we’ll be writing about that soon. Then again, two Triple Crowns in as many months would be quite a feat.

A Triple Crown requires a player to win three $10,000 prize pool tournaments across three sites tracked for the PocketFives Rankingswithin the same seven-day period. We have had five winners so far in February. Visit our Triple Crown Wall of Champions to see who won and learn how to get your own.

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