At the tail end of November, PocketFives.com member David dhilton12Hilton came away with the win in the PokerStars Super Tuesday, cashing for $81,000. The score was far and away his largest online to date and he defeated a field of 422 players in the $1,000 buy-in event. The Tennessee native has won over $700,000 in tournaments tracked for the Poker Rankings and sat down with us to recap his latest claim to fame.

Big scores at the end of a calendar year seem to be the norm for Hilton. In 2008, he hit it big in the PokerStars Wednesday Quarter Million. Last year, he was the runner-up in the Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) Cebu Main Event for $108,000. Hilton told PocketFives.com, “The Super Tuesday win was really good for me. It seems like at the end of the year every year, I hit something huge. I’m getting used to it a little bit, but it feels amazing, especially since it’s the Super Tuesday, one of the hardest tournaments out there.”

The final table of the Super Tuesday featured a wealth of talented poker stars, including Tim Tmay420West (pictured) and Jonathan xMONSTERxDONGx Karamalikis. On the group of nine, Hilton remarked, “They were all really tough. I let them battle it out and tried to move up. I’m a little bit better six- and seven-handed and had a chip lead going into the final table. I tried to stay out of Tmay’s way because he was playing tight. I 3bet him once with a monster, but that was about it.”

For the past four months, Hilton has been playing low- and mid-stakes 180-mans while trying to satellite into larger events like the Super Tuesday. He admitted that he won a whopping five seats into the Super Tuesday that he ultimately took down. One day prior, Hilton final tabled the PokerStars $11 Rebuy for $3,800 and won the $5.50 Rebuy for $7,600.

Following the Moneymaker Boom, Hilton was introduced to poker through his brother, who played the game with friends. He then discovered the online variety: “I heard that you can play online and tried it out. I didn’t know anything about poker and had to learn what beat what. I put $15 on Planet Poker and played $0.10/$0.20 Limit. It was beginner’s luck or something and I ended up playing $20/$40 Limit 12 hours later.”

Hilton attended Chattanooga State in East Tennessee, but ultimately left to pursue poker. After early bankroll management hiccups, he rebounded well: “I’m very strict about bankroll management. If I have a $20,000 bankroll, I’ll play $12 180-mans and up to $50 MTTs. I’m more secure about it than most. Most people say that you want to have 100 buy-ins. I want to have 1,000 buy-ins just because I have a lot of tables open.”

According to the Hendon Mob, Hilton’s most recent live score came in January, when he cashed in the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event for $17,000. He recalled that poker was far from smooth sailing following his return from the Bahamas: “When I got home from the PCA, I went on a rough patch. I spent a lot of money finding a new place to live and ended up grinding online all year long. Next year, my plans are, by the summer, to play a lot more live.”

Prior to the Super Tuesday, his largest online cash came in 2008 in the Wednesday Quarter Million and was good for $60,000. We asked him to compare his APPT score with the Super Tuesday win last month: “I definitely feel better about the Super Tuesday because of the competition in it. At the APPT, the only people I knew were Nam Le and Tony Hachem. To beat out all of these guys online was pretty good. I had good tables throughout the whole tournament.”

Visit PokerStars to sign up for this week’s running of the Super Tuesday.