That’s the million-dollar question: How do you win a tournament with 43,000 players? Last week, Hamilton, Ontario’s Leroy Wong(pictured) accomplished that very feat, coming away with the win in the PokerStars Sunday Storm. Over 43,000 players entered and first place was worth an amazing $35,000. We caught up with Leroy Wong to celebrate.

PocketFives: We’ll be blunt with you. How in the heck do you win a tournament with 43,000 players? Rig the RNG?

Leroy Wong: A huge amount of patience and run-good. I normally don’t play the Storm because I have other important tournaments I have to focus on, but for some reason, the iPoker Network wasn’t working for me, so I had room to play other tournaments on other sites. At the start of the tournament, I was basically in robot mode and really just focusing on my other MTTs because obviously the chance of going deep in a 43,000-entrant tournament is very low.

PocketFives: When did you start realizing you had a decent shot at going far in the Sunday Storm?

Leroy Wong: It honestly didn’t hit me until the final 1,000 players. My Sunday session was terrible overall and a couple of hours before I got deep in the Storm, I bubbled the money in an FTOPS event from a big cooler, which made me just want to get the day over with.

PocketFives: Is there any sort of strategy to navigate a huge field, low buy-in tournament?

Leroy Wong: The Storm is a huge crapshoot. You only can play your best for so long because when you’re deep in a tournament this big, you have to run well for sure. I ran very well and everything seemed to go my way. I was winning 80% of my hands, running over my tables, and taking advantage of the weak players. A lot of the weak players were playing very tight and scared, which was a huge advantage for me.

PocketFives: Is this a major accomplishment for you? Where does it rank in your list of poker accomplishments and why?

Leroy Wong: It’s a very huge accomplishment for me. For the last year-and-a-half, I’ve been on a huge downswing that I’ve been trying to get out of. I have been fighting as much as I can just trying to play my best, even if the results aren’t showing. Even though the prize for this tournament is a decent chunk for someone who plays my stakes, I’m more proud that I beat a field of that size. It is hands-down one of the hardest tournaments in online poker to win because of the size of the field.

PocketFives: You have a pretty solid following online. Talk about how your friends have helped your game.

Leroy Wong: I wouldn’t be talking to you right now if it weren’t for Ryan ryanghall Hall (pictured). In 2008, I thought I knew how to play poker, but I really didn’t know anything. I was a losing player, so I researched how to get good at poker tournaments and came across PocketFives. I read one or two articles on MTT strategy and then saw a list of the top online poker players in Canada and Ryan was one of them. I sent him a message and the rest is history.

Ryan helped me out with all of the tournament basics, like how to play at every stage of a tournament, because I didn’t know how to play early in a tournament, what to do late in a tournament, how to survive, etc.

Another person who has helped me out a lot with poker is Masakik86 (pictured). He is a crazy aggressive player and I think that’s where I get my aggressiveness. I met Masakik86 through Ryan.

PocketFives: Remind us how you got into poker in the first place.

Leroy Wong: I got into poker after watching a rerun of David Williams’ run in the 2004 WSOP Main Event. I thought it was the most amazing thing and still do today. The way he ran and all of the emotional things that happened throughout the tournament for him hooked me.

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