"It's Nice to Finally Bink a Full Tilt Bird"

Dan · January 29, 2015

Earlier this month, Justin Ouimette(pictured) came away with the win in the Full Tilt Sunday Brawl, outlasting a field of 573 entrants en route to a $24,000 payday. It was his second largest tracked cash overall and his largest on Full Tilt. He is one victory shy of 100 for his career and told us, “I’m feeling pretty good. It’s nice to finally bink a Full Tilt bird.”

To be fair, Ouimette, who calls Windsor, Ontario home, doesn’t play on Full Tilt all that much, and hasn’t since Black Friday. However, he hits up the site on Sundays and during major tournament series. This time around, he was among the chip leaders for most of the Sunday Brawl and admitted, “It went about as smoothly as anyone could ask.”

Bounties are a part of the Brawl, as $40 of each person’s buy-in is put on his head. “I mainly focus on how other players react to the bounty aspect, make adjustments to how they play, and counter with what I find works best against everyone,” Ouimette said of how he views the bounties. “The $40 bounty doesn’t really change much on a Sunday grind. If you get 10 or so, it’s nice, but it’s nothing to go crazy over. It’s not like a Progressive Super Knockout where the bounties are huge and are a lot more of a factor.”

Ouimette has almost $1.4 million in tracked online poker scores. Consequently, it’s hard to believe that $24,000 represents his second biggest score ever, trailing only a $28,000 cash in a WCOOP Second Chance event five years go. “I play a little less volume now than usual because my fiancée just had our first child four weeks ago, but I usually play five days a week. I play everything from the Big $5 to the Super Tuesday. I usually play for 10 hours a day during the week and Sundays are crazy, usually lasting 15 hours or longer.”

He got started in poker with his friends in $5 sit and gos. “I got super into it and started loading money online,” Ouimette said. “I was really broke when I first started. I had never really held down any jobs, so the fact that I could make any money at all was appealing. I would borrow $20 from my dad to play and eventually met some of the right people and starting learning the game on a serious level. I have put in a lot of time studying poker.”

Away from poker, he spends time with his fiancée and friends. He used to travel quite a bit before the baby’s arrival and enjoys golfing when it’s warm. Still, his life largely revolves around poker. He explained. “All of my close friends play poker full-time too, so I’m always talking poker or going over hand histories if I’m not playing.”

He is from the poker factory known as Ontarioand is #16 in the Canadian province. He is #2 in his hometown of Windsor, which is across the river from Detroit, and can be found at #300 worldwide in the PocketFives Rankings.

He closed by wanting to send shout outs to his friends: Flippa42, ott-man87, frankwhite42, weekesy, KING BAIT, MidEGambler, iamthedeck ftw, lightningdolt, munchenhb, and drinkingbuddy. “I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for my friends,” he acknowledged.