His June Poker Results are Near Insanity
Romania’s nearinsanity(pictured) lived up to his PocketFives user name earlier this month when he turned in a fourth place finish in the PokerStars Sunday Warm-Upfor $36,000. In last week’s update of the PocketFives Poker Player Rankings, he shot up to #312 worldwide, his highest mark ever, and could soon pierce the top 300. PocketFives caught up with nearinsanity to debrief his Sunday Warm-Up final table.
“I managed to build a stack early on without too much of a hassle, getting good hands and good situations and basically coolering people left and right,” nearinsanity told us when asked about the flow of the weekly tournament on PokerStars. At one point, his stack had been cut to 10 big blinds, but he managed to win a three-way pot with pocket nines against pocket tens and A-Q suited.
Another key hand involved an under the gun player opening and another player shoving for seven big blinds. Our interviewee flatted with A-K from middle position and the flop came ace-high. The chips hit the center, with a player with a stack of 60 big blinds pushing his chips in with A-Q. nearinsanity’s A-K held up and he assumed the chip lead. He commented, “Things were looking good for me. Until I reached the final table, it was all pretty easy and standard. I kept trying to steal pots and play small ball.”
When seven players remained, nearinsanity opened with A-K offsuit and jess1947, who ultimately finished in second place, 3bet from the cutoff. He narrated, “jess1947 was generally picking up on my light opens on the final table bubble, but was very quiet during the final table, so I knew the money was going in, but I was expecting to be flipping a lot. Things got really interesting when GeorgeDanzershoved (he had us both covered) and after bashing my head against the desk a bit, I elected to release my hand.”
In the end, jess1947 had aces, while GeorgeDanzer had queens, so he avoided what could have been a disastrous confrontation.
When four players remained in the tournament, UsleSvendopened and nearinsanity pushed for his last 14 big blinds with K-J. UsleSvend looked him up and showed pocket nines, which held up. nearinsanity finished in fourth place and booked his largest tracked online poker cash to date.
nearinsanity calls Romania(pictured) home, but you’d never know it, as his English is stellar. He told us, “I was born and raised in Romania. I got into poker about five or six years ago. I started with cash games and moved to sit and gos two years ago. I don’t think I have a full year of playing MTTs yet.” Check out PocketFives’ all-new Romania poker community to see what players in the European country are up to.
On why he moved from SNGs to MTTs, nearinsanity explained, “To be honest, I was completely against tournament poker at first. Some friends of mine were grinding SNGs on Full Tilt, so I decided to play some for fun while I was visiting them. I soon realized that the $3 knockouts were extremely soft and pretty fun, so I continued grinding those. Eventually, I moved to the gold mines that were Rush SNGs and Rush MTTs.”
Other signature scores for nearinsanity include a win in the Ongame $100,000 Guaranteed in mid-June for $21,000 and a second place in the PokerStars $22 Cubed last October for $10,000. He’s had a remarkable month of June, turning in $98,000 in tracked cashes so far out of the $294,000 in total winnings logged in his profile. You can catch him on PokerStars playing under the screen name ctlimeand on the Ongame Network as splash3r.
