Say hello to one of the three players who chopped the 900 millionth tournament on PokerStarslate last month: Daniel judgedredd13 Charlton (pictured). The UK native earned $153,000 after a three-way deal, the second largest amount given out and a solid return on his $109 investment. He now has $1.4 million in tracked online poker MTT earnings.

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PocketFives: Awesome job in the 900 millionth tournament on PokerStars. How are you feeling about it?

Daniel Charlton: Really happy. I’ve never really done well in any of the Sunday tournaments, so I am over the moon this time.

PocketFives: Talk about how the tournament went in general. It had almost 19,000 entrants.

Daniel Charlton: I wasn’t feeling too motivated to grind that day. My team, Liverpool, had just lost to Chelsea and probably thrown the Premiership away, so I was a bit tilted, but I loaded up a few tables anyway.

I was in the pack with about 30 to 40 big blinds for a good seven to eight hours. Then, I won a big pot with A-K versus A-Q with about 100 players left to put me in the top 15 in chips. I looked through the lobby, realized I didn’t see almost any other reg, and thought, “I could have a shot at winning this.” So, I started paying more attention and tried not to mess up too badly.

PocketFives: How did the final table go? You were one of four PocketFivers at it.

Daniel Charlton: I won a big flip just before the final table to go in four of nine. I think I had a little over 20 big blinds with a lot of short stacks also at the final table. I thought that people would be trying really hard to ladder with the money jumps being huge, especially considering most of my opponents had relatively low average buy-ins. So, I was min-raising tons of pots and stealing a bunch of chips.

I ran A-K into A-A versus one of the other big stacks. That crippled me, but it wasn’t my time, as my K-J got there versus A-K in a very important pot for me where I smashed my funny bone on the desk celebrating. I wanted to chop since the blinds were big and the money was quite big, so we chopped and I got semi-coolered blind-versus-blind to bust in third. It was a great experience.

PocketFives: Do you have any plans for the money?

Daniel Charlton: I’m going to a bunch of music festivals this summer with friends and flying out for the WSOP Main Event, but I had all of that planned before this cash. I’ll try to not waste the money and have fun with it instead.

PocketFives: How did you get started in poker?

Daniel Charlton: I went to Liverpool University, where I got my first real introduction to poker about eight years ago. We were all broke students and one of the guys on my floor had a set of chips. Immediately, I loved the game and we played very low stakes. That escalated into full-blown play in live casinos and online.

After about three years of getting crushed, I finally had learned enough to actually start winning and, even though I’ve had some bad times at points over the years, overall it has been great ever since.

PocketFives: What poker-related goals do you have in 2014?

Daniel Charlton: I want to continue beating the games and am looking into learning some other games like PLO and Mixed Games. I would like to switch over to cash as my default game and be a Sunday MTT grinder. I have some friends who do that and their quality of life is a lot more stable and less stressful.

The game is constantly evolving and what was good three months ago isn’t good now. You have to adapt constantly to changes in your surroundings. For example, I was discussing a spot with a friend the other day and he said, “I think we should always isolate the limper here with this hand.” However, I like to do different things versus different opponents and not have a ton of set default plays. I want to be like a gas that can change and adapt to its surroundings. I want to be like neon.

PocketFives: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Daniel Charlton: I’d like to thank everyone who has helped me out. There are way too many people to try to list, but everyone who has helped me, you know who you are and thanks.

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