The recent PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker Main Eventdrew a sizable field of over 2,100 players, creating a prize pool that lapped $10 million. The ending of the $5,200 buy-in tournament was a three-way deal and finishing just on the outside of the chop was Malta’s yndzone(pictured), who raked in nearly $600,000. He got into the Main Event through a $200 satellite, meaning he made about 3,000 times his investment after a fourth place finish. Not too shabby.

“I still have not actually realized at all what I did,” yndzone casually said to PocketFives. “I think it is something normal, like getting fourth place at any final table. I do not have any big plans for the money. Maybe I will buy a small apartment here in Malta and 10% will be added to my bankroll.” Everyone at the final tabled book a payday of at least $100,000.

A $200 satellite ticket stamped his way into the WCOOP Main Event and he noted that he was card dead for a period of about six hours down the stretch. The top three finishers all ended up being from Germany, so we asked yndzone about their play. His response: “The German players played very differently from each other. One was very aggressive, one was tight-aggressive, and one was solid. I was not afraid of anyone with four people left, but I was too short after losing a hand with Q-Q against A-K.”

His parents and friends are overjoyed with his $600,000 score and his base on Facebook has grown quite a bit as a result. He explained about his Italian roots, “Italian people love poker and many Italian players are happy for me. In 2009, Italian players started to play poker after seeing it on TV. Important players like Dario Minieri and Max Pescatori made poker popular in Italy. They were both huge.”

As a result of his over half-a-million dollar score, yndzone is within $100,000 of receiving a $1 million cash badge here on PocketFives. In 2011, he took second place in an FTOPS tournament and walked away with $130,000, the second largest score we have tracked for him.

yndzone is from Italy, but makes his home in Malta (pictured). Why make the move? He told us, “In Italy, you cannot play on the dot-com sites; you can just play with Italian people. Malta is free of taxes on poker and the global player pools are what I was looking for. Malta is really near Italy too. If I want to see my parents, I can get back to my town in an hour. It’s a very nice island: beautiful sea, good weather, good quality of life, and good food.” He is the 11th ranked player in Malta and #751 in the world.

He wanted to close by thanking the PocketFives community: “Thank you to all of the readers of PocketFives. I really love this site. It was important to me when I started playing poker because of all of the information on it and all of the players registered. It is important to be like the good players registered on PocketFives. Every day, I look at the site.”

The WCOOP and other big-time online poker series run on PokerStars. If you don’t already have a PokerStars account, sign up through PocketFives’ link and make a deposit to get one free month of PocketFives MTT Training. You’ll also get a 100% up to $600 sign-up bonus. Click here for PocketFives’ PokerStars link.

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