In the November 4 running of the PokerStars Sunday Storm, an $11 buy-in tournament on the world’s largest online poker site, a three-way chop occurred that saw Gerald geraldo22 Cochlan (pictured) come away with a $24,000 payday. He officially took second place. “I didn’t have the chat box on at first,” Cochlan told PocketFives in an exclusive interview. “It was only after my friend told me they were discussing a chop that I chimed in.”

Here were the details of the initial chop discussions, which took place when play was five-handed: “I said I’d like $28,000 since that was going to be around a chip chop. I had 90 million against 45 million and three stacks with less than 15 million. They argued for an ICM chop, which would have only given me $19,000, so I obviously refused and we played on.”

Three hands later, the three short stacks got it in. Pocket kings prevailed, trimming the field to three players, and a chip chop then occurred with payouts of $24,000, $19,000, and $18,000. From there, “With most of the money already locked up, play three-handed was almost absurdly aggressive. I played a huge pot with 9-2 of hearts on a K-3-4 two-heart flop against loveyoustars where he had 5-4 of hearts, which I bricked to leave me short.” $6,000 was left to the winner.

Despite missing his flush draw, Cochlan managed to double up a few times and eventually busted loveyoustarsto set up heads-up play against tolstar36. He commented, “I got heads-up and played some small pots. I got it in with K-Q versus 5-4 on a 2-3-Q-X-6 board after he check-jammed the river. I felt he was so polarized to 5-4 in this spot, but I had to make the call and unfortunately that’s what he had. After that, I was super short and it ended quickly with K-2 versus A-2.”

It must be nice to turn $11 into $24,000 in a single afternoon. “It’s extremely satisfying,” Cochlan told us. “Half of the $24,000 will go to my backers and the rest will be spent on upgrading my existing setup and drinking copious amounts of beer over Christmas.” Hooray beer!

If you take a look at his cash log, you’ll see a cash of $11,000 in another $11 buy-in tournament. Why has he had success at that level? “I’ve played so many tournaments in that buy-in range with not a whole bunch of success until this year. I think it has been a combination of studying a lot more and running a hell of a lot better than in previous years.”

For Cochlan, studying has involved reviewing hand histories with his friend and fellow PocketFives member RLOG(pictured). “He does pretty well and has taught me a lot,” Cochlan said of RLOG. “I also speak to friends like wackyJaxon and a few others about hands all the time. We usually focus on stack sizes and hand ranges along with other aspects like tilt control and motivation.”

RLOG sits at #85 in the PocketFives Poker Rankings, while wackyJaxon is a PocketFives Elite member. We asked Cochlan to rattle off a few pieces of advice he’s received from his peers: “I think I played way too many tables at a time for extremely long sessions. After getting advice from a friend, I started playing sessions that were smaller. I’ll still mass table at the beginning, but I allow myself to play out the tournaments I’m deep in to be able to concentrate.”

He elaborated, “Before, I’d just register for 10 hours solid and be burnt out by the time I got deep in anything. Now, I usually have about 10 to 15 tournaments running while still registering, and fewer as they play out. I used a HUD for years and still occasionally do, but I prefer using game flow and stack sizes to dictate my play.”

Cochlan hails from Aberdeen (pictured) in the United Kingdom and got into poker while in college studying audio engineering around 2005: “Poker was getting pretty big on TV and subsequently I started playing online. I think PokerRoom was my first site.”

Would he consider turning back to audio engineering if poker went south? We asked him that very question and he responded, “I wanted to work on sound effects for films or computer games, but over the years, I’ve fallen away from that world. It’s kind of like poker where it’s constantly changing. You have to immerse yourself in the industry to get anywhere. I’ve been playing poker for so long now that I could never see myself doing anything else.”

He wanted to send a shout out to BenFaz. Visit PokerStars to play in this week’s Sunday Storm. Who knows? Maybe we’ll be writing a feature article about you soon!

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