"Back Then, The Big Secret Was When to Shove with Less than 10 Big Blinds"
Last month, the Full Tilt Online Poker Series, or FTOPS, kicked off with a $215 No Limit Hold’em Re-Entry tournament that drew nearly 3,000 entries. Two members of the PocketFives community – BBOY3110and DaFace – orchestrated a heads-up chop and earned $100,000 and $78,000, respectively.
Matt Volosevich, who is known as DaFace on PocketFives, told us in an exclusive interview, “I refused a chop at the beginning when I had a chip lead of two million. I wanted a little more because I felt I had an edge heads-up. I play heads-up sit and gos and heads-up cash up to $10/$20, so I feel like my heads-up game is really strong, stronger than most MTT players.”
Although he is primarily an MTT player, he mixes in heads-up sit and gos “to have something more consistent as a backup.” On the MTT front, he recently passed $2 million in tracked scores in his PocketFives profile, nearly all of which has come on PokerStars, where he plays as FaceStealer.
Volosevich is originally from the United States, but moved to Costa Rica in order to continue playing online poker. “My buddies and I were some of, if not the first, to move down here,” he relayed. “When it came to getting set up here, we had to wing it, whereas now if you want to move here, there are plenty of people who can help make your life easier. I was a coach here several years back. We ran a sit and go training site out of a beach house.” Services like Poker Refugees help players relocate nowadays.
Now that he has been immersed in the Costa Rican lifestyle for quite some time, he is looking forward to traveling to other parts of the globe, mainly Europe. It’s a far cry from when he first got started in home games during high school. He got into online poker with an assist from fellow PocketFives member Spacegravy, who taught him how to win at sit and gos. He explained, “Back then, the big secret was when to shove with less than 10 big blinds. That was a long time ago. Obviously, the game has come a long way since.”
“I have a group of friends here and we hang out a few times a week,” Volosevich told us about life in Costa Rica to round out our conversation. “I try to go to the beach every month or two. We live near the city, so the beach is about an hour-and-a-half away.” Pura vida!
FTOPS runs quarterly on Full Tilt Poker. If you don’t already have a Full Tilt account, sign up through PocketFives’ links to get a free $25 in most locations plus one free month of PocketFives Training. Get started here.
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