By
Dan |
Published
Aug 20 2008, 12:41 PM
Last weekend, the Full Tilt Online Poker Series Main Event attracted a healthy 4,880 players. The $535 buy-in tournament had a $2.5 million guaranteed prize pool, which meant that several players in the field would be able to turn their initial investment into a house payment (and more) in the matter of just a few hours. The lone man standing at the end of the day was Brian dubbeemin Mintz, a PocketFiver from Santa Rosa, California. He pocketed a staggering $432,400 for his win, by far the largest cash of his poker career and one of the biggest payouts ever online. PocketFives.com sat down with Mintz to talk about his FTOPS Main Event win and learn a little bit more about one of the newest stars of the online poker world.
Mintz claimed that, despite the massive money on the line, his attention was on the tournament: “I was really focused on the tournament the whole time and wasn’t thinking about the money. I’ve had a poker coach here for two years now, Jason MasterJ33 DeWitt. He’s schooled me really well. I wasn’t thinking about the money until late in the game and the whole experience is still settling in.” When we spoke with Mintz, he was on his way back home from a fancy dinner and party in San Francisco, which is about an hour drive.
The College of Charleston graduate got his start in poker when he was just 14 years-old. However, he didn’t begin playing full-time until three years ago. He commented on his career path: “I graduated from college with a philosophy degree and then took the LSAT. I thought about it and felt that I wasn’t ready for law school. I’m a product of the Moneymaker boom. I saw poker on television and started playing online.” His father is a lawyer and ironically wound up being the person who talked Mintz out of going to law school: “In the end, he dissuaded me from going to law school. He told me that I would have to put in a lot of hours and that I had to be sure I was ready to do it.
For the most part, his parents have been very supportive of his poker endeavors. On the Full Tilt Poker Main Event win, Mintz claimed, “It felt good for me to be able to bring a win back home for them.” His poker skills escalated when he met MasterJ33: “People don’t realize the scope of luck in poker. In the city where I’m from, we don’t have casinos. The VFW post has a charity tournament. I sat down next to a young-looking kid and we started playing. He clearly was a good player and he noticed my game. We hit it off and we exchanged numbers. MasterJ33 has been helping me along the way since.”
DeWitt is himself a former FTOPS event winner and made the final table of a $2,000 no limit shootout event at the 2006 World Series of Poker. He also just finished second in a Heartland Poker Tour event at the Majestic Star Casino in Gary, Indiana for $103,136. DeWitt has helped Mintz improve his game dramatically. However, he’s still looking to get better. Mintz noted, “My endgame is struggling. In the last couple of months, I’ve had some opportunities and made some mistakes. All it takes is one mistake; when you’re playing aggressively, your mistakes are magnified. I also need to be able to get into low gear.” Mintz splits his time equally between cash games and tournaments.
He’s not fazed into thinking that he can jump into much higher-level games, either: “I won a tournament, which is great, but also I’ve lost hundreds of tournaments. I’m a realistic person. There are 5,000 people in some tournaments; it’s not guaranteed that you’ll ever do well. There might be 1,000 tournament players who are far better than I am who may never win a tournament like this.”
He notes one hand that occurred late in the FTOPS Main Event. You can read about it in this thread. Mintz was dealt pocket kings and was third to act. With blinds of 14,000/28,000, Mintz re-raised an under-the-gun raiser to 175,000. Action folded to the big blind, iitzzyra, who pushed all in. The initial raiser, TiltinShoes, also pushed all in, which would have set Mintz all in if he called. Mintz thought, requested time, and then folded. TiltinShoes flipped over pocket jacks and iitzzyra showed pocket nines. The board ran out Q-7-2-A-7. Mintz commented, “One of my issues is overestimating how tight people play late in tournaments. Is someone not going to think and shove with jacks in that position? I let it roll right off my back.”
Mintz’s one misstep hardly cost him, as he went on to picket $432,400. Congratulations to Brian dubbeemin Mintz, the winner of the FTOPS Main Event.