Last month, Poland’s CU at 69USD SnG, who will be referred to as CU for the rest of this article, came away with the win in the Full Tilt Poker $500,000 Guaranteed. The tournament drew 2,739 players, each of whom came up with $216 for the Multi-Entry contest, and a three-way deal ended matters. For CU, the payoff was $80,000, the largest amount given away in the chop, and he earned far more than he would have in a typical $69 sit and go.

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“It felt damn good,” CU rather resoundingly told us when asked how pumped he was to rake in 80-large. “Making a final table in a Sunday Major is always exciting.” He defeated poolprofi heads-up and a total of $547,000 was on the line that day in the $500,000 Guaranteed.

The payout structure and grueling tournament to that point prompted CU to want to look at a chop. He told PocketFives, “On Full Tilt, the payout structure is pretty rough. Third place takes over two times less than the winner. I wanted to reduce the variance. We were 40 big blinds deep, but the dynamic was super aggro and there were clickaments in almost every hand, so if anybody got a semi-premium hand, you had to stack it due to the dynamic.”

He explained it was 7:00 in the morning when the chop went down and he had been playing for 15 hours. A total of $20,000 was left on the line after the chop and play continued on. On staring a computer screen until daybreak in his hometown of Lublin, he evaluated, “When you grind a lot, being up that late happens pretty often, especially on Sundays. I used to start playing daily sessions at 4:00pm and stopped registering at 12:45am.”

CU’s poker story is an unique one. He got started in the game in order to be able to afford food, as he said the unemployment rate in Poland is high and the average salary is just $700 per month. “The opportunity to earn as much money as my friend who was grinding NL400 at the time – I couldn’t miss that,” CU admitted. “Then, when I started to learn the game, I found out about the beauty of Hold’em and never looked back. I left school and started to play professionally.”

CU is one of several Polish players we’ve interviewed here on PocketFives, and most of them tell a similar story about poker being resoundingly frowned upon in their homeland. Therefore, he shies away from letting others know he is a poker pro: “People in Poland have no idea about today’s poker world. They think I deal with some dark guys who have weapons on the table, are doing hard drugs, and are cheating all around. I get comments like, ‘Did you ever steal something to have an opportunity to play’ and ‘Are you addicted?'”

Home games in Poland are also frowned upon: “If you run a game, you are a criminal. Cash games are banned, even in casinos, and tournaments have around a 30% rake. Live poker is dead in Poland, although in lots of cities, there are leagues. Lots of tournaments disappeared after an incident in which 100 policemen and customs officials went into a club where there was a $15 tournament going on. There was a huge interrogation. Everyone’s chip counts were written down.”

Despite the environment in Poland, CU has managed to rack up $885,000 in tracked cashes, about three-quarters of which has come on PokerStars. CU is one of the top dogs in Poland and has been a member of the PocketFives community for a hair under two years.

Other top-performing members of the Poland pokercommunity include dadowiec, Pyszalek, and Raaadzio91. There are about a half-dozen Polish PocketFivers with over 5,000 PLB Points. Congrats to CU and the entire Polish community on becoming a major force in the online poker world.

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