A longtime member of PocketFives, Ludovic CutsssLacay (pictured) is a sponsored pro of Winamax, which accepts players from across the European Union. Lacay has $3.2 million in live cashes under his belt, according to the Hendon Mob, including a win in the EPT San Remo Main Event in 2012 for nearly a million bucks. The acclaimed poker pro sat down with PocketFives to talk about his career and the upcoming World Series of Poker.

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PocketFives: Talk about your plans for the upcoming WSOP. What events are you looking forward to the most and when are you playing?

Ludovic Lacay: I will get there on June 3 and play my first event on June 5. As I only play No Limit Hold’em and Pot Limit Omaha, I’m looking forward to the $10K PLO, the $10K Heads-Up, all of the Six-Max events, and the Main Event. Also, if anyone out there wants to back for the One Drop, I’m sure this is a really cool tournament to play.

PocketFives: Do you have any advice for a first-timer to the WSOP? What do you think is most important for success?

Ludovic Lacay: I think what is most important is to realize two things. First, you are there to play poker and not to party, which took me about four years to realize. Second, you will probably need to take small breaks in the middle of the series to avoid burnout. This is completely different than online poker, can be very frustrating, and is emotionally and physically very draining.

PocketFives: Are you playing as much live poker now as you did in 2013 and 2012?

Ludovic Lacay: I have had a slow start to 2014, but I’ve always been like that. I cannot play as many tournaments as some other players, either. I need to feel the passion and fun in poker to play 100% and I’ve learned that if I don’t really feel like playing a tournament, forcing myself won’t make me play well. That said, I have a huge spring coming up with San Remo, Monaco, the Winamax Poker Open in Marrakech, and the WSOP.

PocketFives: What do you do away from poker nowadays?

Ludovic Lacay: I try to make the most of my travels, something I’ve not been doing well in the past. I’ve found that if you link poker to discovering new places and new activities, it’s much more fun.

PocketFives: How did you first sign on with Winamax and what’s it like representing the site?

Ludovic Lacay: I signed on after meeting Michel Abecassis and Aurelien Guiglini in Las Vegas when I went there for the first time. The Winamax boss had a lot of ambition to create a team of talented young players and make them grow into great players. I loved that idea and also couldn’t pass up such an opportunity, so I jumped onboard and I’ve been with them for about six years now. It has been a great ride and I don’t think I could have picked a better sponsor. They are now the French leader, one of the world’s biggest sites, and if you ask me, I think they have developed the best poker software in the world.

PocketFives: How did you get started in poker originally? Why was the game interesting?

Ludovic Lacay: I’ve always been a geek. I had my first computer at around 10 years old, was making websites when I was 12, and started playing video games competitively at 14. I didn’t have as much success as ElkYor Flush_Entity, but I was on one of the five best teams in France and we were traveling a lot to competitions.

But, then I was 19 and realized all that I earned from that were lots of useless motherboards, processors, hard drives, etc. I had failed my first year of mathematics studies and was under some pressure from my family, so I decided to stop the game, go to law school, and focus on that.

During the summer, I heard about poker, had nothing better to do than try it, and when school started, I was already making a bit of money at it. I decided to do both and moved up in stakes.

PocketFives: Where do allof the derivations of your poker name “Cutsss” come from?

Ludovic Lacay: It’s really a silly story. There was a French radio show in the 2000s called “Skyrock.” My friends and I really liked it, so we all picked the name of someone from the show and called our first Counter-Strike team “Sky.” I was “[Sky]Cutk!lleR” or something like that. With time, it evolved into different nicknames because “Cuts” is very often taken on busy online poker sites.

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