Earlier this month, woohoo42(pictured) came away with the win in the 888 Poker Super XL Main Event, a $600 NLHE tournament with a $1 million guarantee. There was no chop and woohoo42 banked $199,000 for the win. “I’m going to continue working with my staking group,” he told PocketFives in an exclusive interview. “I will increase their buy-ins. They were probably happier than I was.”

He won a $30 Step satellite to get into the $600 buy-in tournament and also won a $160 qualifier. He took the chip lead in the Super XL Main Event at the very beginning and didn’t relinquish it for the first three hours.

From there, woohoo42 told us, “I had a bad stretch after losing a blind-versus-blind flip with J-10 versus 3-3 against a guy who ended up final tabling as well, so that was sick. He was at my second table with over 1,000 players left and we both went all the way.”

The Serbian poker player said that the 888 tournament’s structure likely contributed to his success. “It was very deep all the way,” he said. “Recently, I had a deep run in the Sunday Million, but the average stack was way shorter. In this tournament, I was never all-in for my stack. Since I am a cash game player, it did wonders. I was able to exploit other players a lot post-flop.”

He had one memorable hand with 5-3 offsuit. He told us, “The key hand was at the final table when we were four-handed. I was the chip leader and opened with 5-3 off. I was playing 90% of the hands at the time from the cutoff and the button. I faced a 3bet from the small blind and saw that his average buy-in was very low, so I knew he couldn’t risk going out fourth when he was second in chips. I 4bet him and he called. The flop was 10-7-6 rainbow. I bet one-third of the pot and apparently he folded A-Q. I showed the hand and my rail went crazy in the chat. From there on, I was stealing every hand and was lucky that they didn’t get A-A or K-K since that was their all-in range at the time.”

He started playing poker in 2008. At the time, he had a bankroll from sports betting and said he “went into poker and hit a crazy heater. I ended up busting to Viktor Blom on Bet365. That was how it started. That’s why I was never scared money in the Super XL Main Event. My staking group and steady income also help. I would say that staking and coaching is my full-time job.”

Hold it now. Viktor Blom busted woohoo42 on Bet365? That’s not something you hear every day. “He busted my first bankroll, $40,000 or so, in January 2009” he told us. “We were both young sickos. He happened to run better. I dedicated myself to school after that. I had a full scholarship at the University of Richmond, but I dropped out because of poker.”

Blom continues to be one of the fixtures of the nosebleed-stakes poker community five years later and woohoo42 said of his game, “He was very good at adjusting and he was very good playing deep.” Blom recently returned to Full Tilt Poker after a two-month hiatus.

Away from poker, woohoo42 plays basketball and spends time with his girlfriend. He is a big fan of the NBA.

On 888 Poker, you can find woohoo42 playing under the user name Adza32. In November, he finished fifth in the PokerStars Big $55 and seventh in the Bigger $162 in a 24-hour span for $12,000 total. He finished 19th in the Sunday Million last week.

He is one of 242 members of the Serbia pokercommunity on PocketFives that have registered PLB scores. Serbia is #31 in the PocketFives Country Poker Rankings with a combined PLB score of its top 20 members of 48,102 points, sitting just ahead of New Zealand. Serbian PocketFivers have combined career online MTT winnings of $6.4 million, $1.8 million of which has come in the last three months.

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