The world of Bryan bparisParis (pictured) is about to be turned upside down. Right before Black Friday, he proposed to his girlfriend, but the resulting shakeup of the online poker industry has left the couple still determining when they’ll say their vows. The proposal story, according to Paris: “I went up to the diamond district in Los Angeles the day before her birthday and bought the ring secretly. I told her I was going to the DMV so she wouldn’t want to go with me and then for her birthday, I took her down to the beach and proposed there.” Cute.

When the wedding will be is anyone’s guess. “We’re not sure right now,” the groom-to-be told PocketFives. “We had plans of renting a really big place down in Costa Rica and holding it there in February or March, but I don’t think we’re doing that now. We may try to figure out something in British Columbia or do it in Oregon where both of our families live, but our plans are a bit up in the air at the moment.”

Following Black Friday, his life has been a whirlwind. He originally moved to Canada in September 2011, came back to the United States for the 2012 World Series of Poker, went to Europe for three months, headed to Costa Rica for one month, and then found himself back in Canada. No wonder there hasn’t been time to plan a wedding.

“We were going to stay in Costa Rica long-term,” Paris remarked, “but my fiancée was held up at gunpoint directly in front of our condo building in Escazú four days into the trip. We looked around at some other cities hoping to find something safer, but after doing some research, it seemed like the whole country was just way too dangerous for us. Canada is expensive and cold, but closer to family and more like the U.S. in a lot of ways. I’m planning on staying in the Vancouver area until the WSOP Main Event, but my plans might change depending on how things go.”

Last weekend, Paris and fellow PocketFiver SuchADegen(pictured) chopped the PokerStars Sunday 500. Paris officially came in second place and earned $54,000, which should be plenty of seed money for a fairy tale wedding. On the chop, Paris told us, “I had already locked up my biggest score on PokerStars by $20,000, so I wanted to guarantee myself a bit more. I also was told we had to still play for $6,000, so I was content with locking up $54,000 and going for $60,000.” SuchADegen pulled in $67,000 for the win.

We asked Paris to talk about SuchADegen’s game. “He was a fairly aggressive Euro whose game seemed reasonably well suited for heads-up, so I didn’t want to play for the full $20,000,” Paris said of the Austrian. “He was pretty active the entire time I was at his table and seemed to be applying a lot of pressure. He played very well at the final table, picked good spots to accumulate chips, and managed to induce floppinhel to 5bet shove A-5 against him three-handed due to his high level of aggression.”

As Paris said, the Sunday 500 chop marked his largest score on PokerStars and fourth largest tracked online cash to date. It was a relief being back on top: “The last two years since Black Friday have been fairly rough. I was in the top 10 on PocketFives for most of 2011, including winning the PLB in January, but Black Friday shook me up quite a bit. I had a huge chunk of my bankroll stuck on Full Tilt, so it has taken me a while to recover and I’ve had to move around a lot.” He has also amassed two Triple Crowns.

His largest live score to date was worth $44,000 and came following a 193rd place finish on Day 5 of the 2012 WSOP Main Event. However, he is turning his attention online in 2013: “The slower pace and lower volume of live poker wears on me after a while. I can easily get in $10,000 in buy-ins online any given day across the various sites I play, while live it’s hard to get that much in each day. Even if you could, you would either need to get backed for everything or have a monster bankroll since you’re investing it all into one tournament rather than spreading it out across 40 to 50 tournaments.”

He added, “I think my goal this year is to finish in the top 10 on PocketFives rather than anything related to live poker. I may even skip the majority of the WSOP this year for the first time in six years.” He also didn’t attend the 2013 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in the Bahamas.

Paris is quite busy away from the felts, as you might be able to tell: “My fiancée and I love travelingand we take a lot of time to sightsee everywhere we go. I also enjoy snowboardinga lot, which I’ll get to do plenty of in Canada over the next couple of months, and I play golf, which I will likely not get to do for a while.”

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