Last month, Elliott elliottpetPeterman (pictured) final tabled the PokerStars Sunday 500and put away $19,000. That week’s edition had 786 entrants and a prize pool that almost hit $400,000. “I was pretty happy to finish fifth in a tough field,” he told PocketFives. “It’s just a disappointing feeling not to finish higher when you reach the final table. I had some tough breaks with 18 left when I had a decent chip lead that forced me to play a short stack from then on.”

Peterman plans to use his winnings to replenish his poker bankroll. “I had a rough time last year on and off the tables and am in the process of trying to get back on track,” he explained. “I had a decent couple of months in tournaments and hopefully these results allow me to play SCOOP and the WSOP without feeling too much pressure.”

So what happened that temporarily derailed his game? We asked Peterman, who candidly told us, “I had a tough start to the year at cash games and unfortunately started drinking and gambling too much, which is always a bad combination. So, I took a break from everything, including poker, for a couple of months, stopped drinking, quit gambling, and started playing tournaments.” That was definitely a good decision.

Believe it or not, he only started playing tournaments last September. He shows $605,000 in lifetime online MTT winnings in his PocketFives profile, headlined by a Sunday Warm-Up final table on the first weekend of 2015 for $36,000. By our count, his latest final table in the Sunday 500 is the third time he’s done so.

For the last five years, he has made a habit of playing $5/$10 and $25/$50 cash games, but used to go as high as $200/$400. “I’ve always loved gambling from when I was 15 years old and got bored of constantly losing,” he said of how he got his start in poker. “So when I was around 19, friends of mine started playing home games for really small amounts of money and I started to win quite consistently.”

From there, Peterman began going to cardrooms and signed up for a backing deal online. He began his journey at low-stakes $0.10/$0.20 games and worked his way up from there.

He has his location set in his profile as San Jose, Costa Rica (pictured), where he is the top-ranked player. He is #3 in the Central American nation and can be found at #47 worldwide in the PocketFives Rankings, his highest position ever. He final tabled the Turbo Mega Deep on 888 Poker over the weekend for $10,000 and seems poised to continue climbing our Rankings.

Congrats to Peterman on his recent Sunday 500 final table!

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