Making quick work of the fourth event of the recently-completed Full Tilt Online Poker Series was Jeff jeffbeesdatGray. The Texan scooped a healthy $138,000 payday for the win, one of the largest prizes of the 25 event tournament series. The $300+22 buy-in cubed tournament (one rebuy plus one add-on) came with a $600,000 guaranteed prize pool. In the end, GrampaJeff, the name Gray plays under on Full Tilt Poker, emerged victorious from the pack of 815 players. He’s one of the old school PocketFivers and sat down with us to discuss what it felt like to have success closing a tournament as well as reminisce about some of his memories of PocketFives.

Winning the fourth event of FTOPS X meant outlasting an incredibly talented field in a high-stakes tournament. Gray commented on what it felt like to nab a six-figure payday: “It was kind of a monkey off my back. I have three final tables in the Sunday Million and four top ten finishes. I also final tabled the Million and Second Chance at the same time, which should give me more confidence. However, I was starting to feel like I may not be a good closer.” Despite his ability to make final tables, coming up short several times left him in doubt: “You start to question yourself. The win felt very good and I am still enjoying it.”

So what changed this time for Gray? What allowed him to get over the proverbial hump and finally notch a win? “I played very aggressively from the start of the final table, as I felt my opponents were trying to fold to cash in a couple of places before they started really playing.” That wasn’t his original strategy, however. He told PocketFives.com that he planned to play the final table out in a similar fashion to a sit and go, tightly in the beginning and then opening up later on. He switched gears, though, after noticing that “the table was absurdly tight and many of them had their hands marked to fold before the action came to them. I decided that opposite the table lag was the best approach.”

The result: His largest online cash to date. He’s now ranked #62 in the world according to the PocketFives.com Online Poker Rankings. He final tabled the Sunday Million in June for $33,824. He took ninth in Event #16 of the FTOPS X on Full Tilt Poker, a $300+22 No Limit Hold’em 6-max rebuy event, for $16,592. In October, he logged 47 cashes in tournaments that count for the Rankings for $12,786. During the 2007 World Series of Poker, he finished 73rd in a $3,000 buy-in No Limit event for $5,250.

Gray joined the site on June 24, 2005, three and a half years ago. He was one of PocketFives’ first members and commented, “I owe a very large amount of my personal success to PocketFives. I was a losing MTT player when I joined the site and I was able to learn from a lot of great theorists. Being a voracious reader, I was able to take many things from great posters like ActionJeff, apestyles, Annette_15, TheWacoKidd, Ari, and others, which really helped transform my game.”

One of his favorite memories on PocketFives.com was when Jon apestyles Van Fleet finished second the Sunday Million. A high-profile player on PocketFives.com, Van Fleet’s accolade was followed closely by a throng of the site’s faithful. Gray recalled, “Everyone was on his rail and there was thread after thread on in the Poker Discussion forum.” Van Fleet now has wins in the $100 rebuy on PokerStars as well as the Absolute Poker $150,000 Guaranteed for $37,500. Van Fleet is a Mod on PocketFives.com, a Monthly PLB winner, and a Triple Crown holder.

Another memory for Gray surrounds the time that Polpolpolpol took second in a WCOOP event in 2006. Gray commented, “I almost got banned, but I kept posting polpolpolpolpolpol and it was ruining threads. Ape was doing it too and it was pretty hilarious.” You can take a look at one of Gray’s masterpieces by clicking here.

Last week, Gray shot up from 70th to 62nd in the Rankings. The week before, he was at number 95. We look forward to more big things from jeffbeesdat in the near future.

—–