New Jersey poker pro Steve Scales (pictured), who plays under the screen name Turb0licious, loves the fact that legal online poker in his home state is growing more and more every day. On March 23, he won the WSOP.com $25,000 Guarantee Sunday Major for $7,040. On the same night, he also made the final table of the WSOP $10,000 Guarantee Sunday Weekly, his third weekend in a row doing so. He has over $150,000 in live cashes and won a WSOP Circuit ring in December 2012 at Harrah’s Atlantic City.

PocketFives: Congrats on your win in the WSOP.com $25K Sunday Major win. Tell us how you’re feeling.

Steve Scales: Thanks. I appreciate the kind words. Put it this way, I won’t lie and say I’m feeling terrible! In all seriousness, it feels great to win WSOP’s $25K Major right here in New Jersey where I reside. I just recently started playing on the New Jersey sites, so I have only played the WSOP.com $25K twice, finishing 14th and now first, so it’s an awesome feeling for sure.

I feel the New Jersey online poker market is taking off and I am confident it’s only going to get better from here. That excites me as a professional poker player. To have legal online poker right here in my home state of New Jersey is an awesome, long overdue feeling.

PocketFives: Do any hands from the $25K stick out to you?

Steve Scales: We can take a closer look at one hand I remember that I perhaps could have taken a different approach to. I won’t say my play was wrong (others might disagree), but I will say that there were options on what to do. We were at a 1,000-chip big blind, UTG+2 opened to 3,200, I raised to 7,800 in the cutoff, and he called. We saw a 5-7-10 two-heart flop and he snap-shoved for 9,800. I called and he had J-10 of spades and rivered another 10 to beat my Q-Q.

To some, it’s a snap shove on that UTG+2 open with Q-Q and I don’t disagree with that. However, I feel we had options. First, we could 3bet shove and most likely take it down pre-flop. Or, we could 3bet and open the button and blinds up to potentially seeing a 4bet spot and acting on that, which is great for our hand. We could even have the original raiser come over the top thinking we’re weak, which also plays great for our hand.

PocketFives: Tell us about making the final table of the WSOP $10K Guarantee three Sundays in a row.

Steve Scales: It used to be that every weekend the pressure mounted in that tournament for me; now, I enjoy it. I like the current rush it’s giving me, as it drives me to constantly play better and chase the win in that tournament. It’s a great tournament that exceeds the $10,000 guaranteed prize pool and I see the turnouts only getting better from here. Maybe I’ll get it done this weekend, we’ll see!

PocketFives: How did you get started in poker originally and why was it appealing?

Steve Scales: I started playing home games in high school a few days a week. There was a pretty big group of us who played and we would alternate who hosted the game each night. We played small-stakes cash and a tournament or two each month. It was a ton of fun and poker really grabbed my interest the more I played. From there, I only wanted to get better.

I picked up the game a lot more in college and played some juicy underground games in Erie, Pennsylvania, where I went to college. A lot of my close friends were poker players in college, so I lucked out big-time meeting the right people. The games were good. I was doing well and having a ton of fun meeting new people.

PocketFives: To what do you attribute your current online success?

Steve Scales: Good question. I feel I take a different approach to the game, somewhat outside the norm of others, and that separates me from a lot of people. I will sometimes take unconventional lines in hands that others might disagree with and I’m fine with that. I’m constantly changing up my style of play when and where I feel it’s in my best interest. I guess in a way I have always felt I had my own style.

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