On October 16th, Andrew achenChen (pictured) was part of a five-way chop of the PokerStars Sunday Million. He came away with $112,000 and, perhaps more importantly, his first six-figure online score. Lest we forget that Chen has experienced a considerable amount of success in the live poker world, including a win in the NAPT Bounty Shootout in the Bahamas in January for $263,000. He has nearly $1.8 million in live earnings and sat down with PocketFives to discuss his latest claim to fame.

PocketFives: Talk about the five-way chop. How did that come about and, looking back, are you still happy with the deal itself?

Andrew Chen: It was sort of weird because PokerStars always comes out with chip-chop numbers, which are almost always unfair. So, I did the ICM numbers myself and then realized it’d be kind of awkward to say, “No, let’s use these ICM numbers that give me more money, but I want even more money on top of that.” Especially if a few of the other players had no idea what I was talking about regarding ICM, it might have seemed like I was already asking for more by introducing the ICM numbers in the first place.

Anyway, I probably should have and could have asked for more money, but I’m fine with the chop. Also, the blinds went up and I was going to be in the big blind right after we made the deal.

PocketFives: Talk about not being able to defend your PokerStars NAPT Bounty Shootout victory due to Black Friday.

Andrew Chen: To be honest, it doesn’t really mean that much to me. It’s sort of a fallacy with a lot of poker fans that winning a tournament back-to-back means anything more than winning any two tournaments within the same sample. They would both be equally amazing and lucky feats. That said, I would have loved to defend my title because it’s an incredibly fun tournament.

PocketFives: You’ve been a terror on the EPT and NAPT, recording three final tables and one win. Is there something about those tours that’s conducive to you having success?

Andrew Chen: While I do think I play live MTTs better than most players, it doesn’t mean that I’m not running ridiculously hot in them. Yes, the structures are good and the fields are usually pretty soft, but there isn’t really anything specific I can say about the tournaments other than I’ve been extremely lucky when playing them.

PocketFives: Keeping your success in mind, do you have any advice for online poker players trying to hit it big in the live arena?

Andrew Chen: Keeping with my buzz-killing answers, I’d say a lot of people probably shouldn’t be playing live tournaments at all. You really should be close to adequately bankrolled for these tournaments rather than selling huge percentages of yourself while paying thousands of dollars in expenses. The variance is just absurd.

With that out of the way, the best advice I can give would be to pay a lot of attention to everything. While you’re probably not going to notice any pulsing veins or whatever, there’s a lot to be said for paying attention to other players’ timing, sizing, etc. Pay attention to others even after you’ve folded and try to remember everything. Also, a lot of online poker players don’t play tight enough live, but I suppose that’s up for debate.

PocketFives: We’re talking to you during the EPT’s stop at San Remo. Talk about the field there this year.

Andrew Chen: EPT San Remo is consistently one of the largest and softest live tournaments out there and this year is no different. Unfortunately, I bubbled the Main Event, but there are a bunch of good side events.

PocketFives: How did you get started in poker? How did your friends and family feel about you playing for a living?

Andrew Chen: I was in my first year of university and a couple of friends told me about their roommates and acquaintances making tons of money playing online poker. I deposited $50 on PokerStars and started playing $0.01/$0.02 full ring, ran it up a bit, and eventually got into MTTs.

I dropped out of university a couple of weeks into my third year and, looking back, it probably wasn’t the greatest decision. By that time, I had made a decent amount of money and my friends and family were pretty supportive, but it was still kind of irresponsible to drop out. Thankfully, I ran super hot and have never looked back.

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