Last month, the finale of the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker, or WCOOP, was its $5,200 buy-in Main Event. With over 1,800 entrants, the tournament offered up a mind-boggling prize pool of over $9.1 million and, perhaps not surprisingly, a six-way deal took place. Third in the 2012 WCOOP Main Event belonged to Ryan Carter, who goes by TheCartelon PocketFives and smashed through the minefield under the screen name TheCart3r.

“It still feels pretty unbelievable,” Carter told PocketFives a couple of weeks removed from his groundbreaking score. “You play poker for these big scores, always sort of expecting that they will come one day, but it’s a pretty big shock when it actually happens.”

Carter described the six-way chop, which also included longtime PocketFives member Mike telks Telker, as “a really long process” that came a few hands after he lost with pocket kings against pocket fours when his opponent was all-in. If he had been successful in that hand, the final table would have been cut to five players. Then, who knows what would have happened.

“It’s really in everyone’s best interest to make a good deal at that point, with such massive payouts,” Carter rationalized. The minimum payout in the chop was $502,000, while two players, including Telker, took home over $1 million. The Russian winner of the WCOOP Main Event, maratik, famously shouted “i wont million” during the negotiation, igniting a new catch phrase for the poker community.

So far, the money hasn’t been spent. “I probably won’t do anything too baller with the money,” Carter told PocketFives. “I will probably just put most of it away and maybe do a few home renovations here and there. That’s starting to be a hobby of mine, but I’d say I’m a complete DIY fish right now. My fiancee, who also plays, bought a house a few months back and we moved to a nice little lake/mountain town in British Columbia called Peachland (pictured). There are lots of odd jobs to do with a new place.”

Carter now has over $1.2 million in tracked cashes in his PocketFives profile and also took third in two other WCOOP tournaments this year: a $530 No Limit Hold’em event and a $215 Pot Limit Omaha High-Low event. Those two scores were good for over $50,000 combined. He got his poker career started off on the right foot by playing quarters at his father’s Christmas parties when he was just 12 years old.

“Poker has always been something I’ve enjoyed, and I’ve never been one to do the 9-to-5 grind,” Carter responded when asked why he pursued the game full-time. “Plus, I’ve never really had a ‘real’ job. I built websites for a while, but it’s either been poker or that since university. I attempted to work in the collectable card game industry for a while, but that never went anywhere.”

You can see by his PocketFives Rankingsstats (pictured) that Carter is averaging nearly $10,000 over the course of 134 tracked cashes and has several major strengths in his game. He told us that his ability to recognize various situations and table dynamics and adjust his game to fit them has helped propel him to where he is today.

He added, “My lack of ego has certainly helped too. I sort of approach poker straight up and don’t really let my personality change how I play. I think a lot of people want to be seen as a good player by others, so they always take the flashiest/most aggressive lines even if it’s not the best way to play in the moment.” He’s a member of the British Columbia poker community and, in case you missed it, here were the final table results of the WCOOP Main Event:

1. maratik $1,000,907.26
2. TheCart3r $662,516.39 (TheCartel)
3. Jossel2008 $814,602.12
4. munchenHB $1,000,584.34 (telks)
5. sly caveat $601,884.93
6. FOO-92 $502,992.46
7. Kakalala $182,500.00
8. takechip $136,875.00
9. mitdadu $91,250.00

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