When we ask players what plans they have for gigantic poker cashes, their top-of-mind response is usually putting it back into their bankrolls. For some, investing in the stock market is important, while for others, buying a new house or a new car could be in the offing. Enter Ukraine’s vadka(pictured), who recently captured $107,000 for finishing second in the PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up. He told us nearly immediately that he plans to give 10% of his profits to charity.

“Even though it is my biggest online poker score so far, I feel like it was long overdue,” vadka told PocketFives in an exclusive interview. “I was backed, so unfortunately I don’t have to worry about financial planning for $107,000. A small part of my share will go to my bankroll, which had been on life support pretty much since the end of the 2012 WSOP. Ten percent will go to charity. I’ve been trying to make it a rule to donate 10% of my net profit for years.”

He is now about $160,000 shy of securing his $1 million cash badgein his PocketFives profile. We asked him to break down the final table of the Warm-Up for us: “I was pretty happy with how the final table got set up. Luckily, a couple of dangerous players got eliminated before it and the only two players I really worried about coming in were MAMOHT_Tand LeBronn2333, both of whom I am very familiar with from the Russia poker community.” The two finished seventh and first, respectively.

By the way, MAMOHT_T (pictured) is ranked #15 worldwide on PocketFives. vadka continued, “The seating at the final table was also pretty fortunate since LeBronn2333 got seated directly to my right. Even though MAMOHT_T had position on me, he lost half of his stack very early on and started playing much tighter. It also didn’t hurt to come in with a chip-leading stack even though there was not much separation in the top five at all.”

A field-pacing stack allowed the Ukrainian to play aggressively. Here was his game plan at the time: “I was playing aggressively on the final table bubble and was able to continue the same way at the final table. I have to say I was getting more respect than usual on my raises throughout the tournament and it didn’t change when the final table started. My strategy was pretty standard: try to steal whenever possible and put pressure with 3bets in position with or without hands.”

We opened this article by talking about vadka donating 10% of his profits to charity. This is one of the first times that charitable donations have ever come up in an interview, so we wanted to ask where his giving spirit comes from.

Speaking on the 10%, he told us, “I adopted of the idea of donating at least 10% of my profits from several different sources over the years. I think the original mention of it was from Tony Robbins at one of his seminars. Then, I read about it in the books ‘The Richest Man in Babylon’ and ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad.’ It is important because I feel likethere must be at least some social benefit from the activity you choose as your profession. Also, it is important to be grateful for what you are given through your accomplishments.”

vadka got his start in poker after catching the game on ESPN. He admitted that it was the only sport worth watching on the small screen: “I watched it when there was absolutely no good sport to watch on TV at end of the 1990s and early 2000s. Close to the end of 2004, while I was working as a day trader for one of the New York trading shops, one of my colleagues found an online poker site and deposited $20 there, so I did too.”

He switched to playing poker full-time in May 2005, two years after Chris Moneymaker turned the industry upside-down, and relayed, “At the time, I was already very interested in poker. Doing both online poker and day trading didn’t do me much good. I wasn’t focusing fully on either and losing money in both activities. By that time, I had already won satellites for the 2005 WSOP for a total of $16,000 in buy-ins and made a decision to fully focus on poker.”

See who else is making waves in PocketFives’ Ukraine poker community.

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