Last month in the Full Tilt Sunday Brawl, Vancouver’s Ankush pistons87 Mandavia (pictured) topped a field of 624 entrants for a $26,000 payday. Six of the top eight finishers that day were members of PocketFives and our community scooped 71% of the prize pool, or $88,000 in real money.

“It feels good for sure,” Mandavia told PocketFives. “I think I got ninth the last time I played it, so it was nice to get some redemption.” He has won other Sunday Majors as well, including the Sunday $109 Rebuy, Sunday Second Chance, and Sunday Mulligan.

Heads-up, Mandavia went toe-to-toe with former #1 ranked mindgamer. We asked Mandavia for a scouting report on his fellow PocketFiver and he responded, “He’s obviously a great player, but I am more experienced heads-up, so I definitely feel I have an edge on most MTT players.”

If you don’t already know, Mandavia is a former heads-up sit and go regular. He used to play $5,000 sit and gos on a regular basis and made Supernova Elite on PokerStars for three years before shifting his focus to MTTs. He is on the cusp of passing $2.5 million in online tournament scores for his career and was once ranked as high as #29 in the world on PocketFives.

We’d think playing heads-up games for $5,000 a pop could mean plenty of pressure to perform. “You just get used to it after a while,” Mandavia said of separating the monetary aspect of the game. “Moving up in stakes was part of it too, so it wasn’t just jumping into a $5,000 heads-up sit and go right away.”

If you’re wondering why Mandavia would abandon a seemingly profitable heads-up sit and go career, he said, “Heads-up is not as lucrative as it used to be. The competition is fierce and the recreational player pool has dried up quite a bit. I also don’t play full-time anymore, so MTTs accommodate that schedule better.”

His largest tracked score came in September in a $10,300 No Limit Hold’em Eight-Max Re-Entry event during the WCOOP and was good for over a half-million dollars officially. “It was very awesome,” he said. “This year has been amazing overall.” He has SCOOP, WCOOP, and FTOPS titles and has performed admirably well during major tournament series.

In November, Sweden’s Martin Jacobson took home $10 million after winning the World Series of Poker Main Event. If you caught the action on television or in person, you might have noticed Mandavia on Jacobson’s rail, which he called “one of the coolest poker moments of my career.”

“We’ve been friends for a while,” Mandavia said of his relationship with the reigning WSOP Main Event champion (pictured). “We both have traveled the circuit in the past. The experience was pretty awesome. Martin going from short stack to winning was insane and a lot of our friends were there. It’s the biggest title you can win in poker, so I was honored to be part of it.” Jacobson was down to just five big blinds at one point during the November Nine before storming back.

He closed by wanting to thank his family and friends for being so supportive.

The Sunday Brawl runs weekly on Full Tilt. If you don’t already have a Full Tilt account, sign up through the links on PocketFives to get a 100% up to $600 deposit bonus and one free month of Tournament Poker Edge or CardRunners poker training. Get started here.

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