In mid-July, John Hewitt‘s elimination in tenth place from the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event set up the famed November Nine. While he wasn’t able to be part of the festivities in November, Hewitt (pictured) banked $600,000 and has quickly become a well-known player in his native Costa Rica. PocketFives.com caught up with Hewitt a few weeks after that fateful July evening to discuss several critical hands as well as his poker story.

PocketFives.com: You’re not a part of the 2011 WSOP November Nine, but you still came away with $600,000. How do you look at it?

John Hewitt: I understand that it’s normal to get knocked out of tournaments, so it’s just unlucky for me to be knocked out in tenth place and just be remembered as a Bubble Boy forever. There were a couple of hands that could have gone my way. I lost A-K to K-J for the chip lead when there were 11 players left. Bad things happen, you know? You have to take the good with the bad, but it’s a good jump-start to my life.

PocketFives.com: Late on the November Nine play down day, you doubled up Badih Bounahra(pictured) with K-Q against pocket kings. What did you expect Bounahra to show there?

John Hewitt: I’ll be the first to admit that it was a mistake to call off right there, but it had been a very grueling eight days of playing at least ten hours of poker a day. I’m not used to playing live and I was a bit frustrated. I had been folding for about four hours and had been blinded down from 22 million to about 14 million. I literally lost one-third of my stack without playing a hand.

After four hours of folding, the first time I opened, somebody 3bet me and I thought, “Oh my God, this can’t be happening.” I was really tired at that point and thought I’d probably be flipping. There were three people who should have gone out before and busted, so I thought if I were flipping, that’s fine – I’ll accept it. Obviously, I ended up running into kings. It was a mistake and I accept that. Having said that, I think I played a really good tournament.

PocketFives.com: You also doubled up Matt Giannetti(pictured) with A-10 against jacks late on Day 8. The call seems automatic, but is there a red flag when Giannetti open-shoves from under-the-gun?

John Hewitt: It was close because it was the first hand after a break. I knew he had been talking to his friends and I just thought he might be shoving really light under-the-gun. It looks so strong when he does that for 10 big blinds, but he’s trying to get some chips and see cards for another round. It’s a pretty standard call, I think. I know people will judge based on results, but if he shows A-9 there, all of a sudden, I’m a genius.

PocketFives.com: Besides the money, how has your life changed since mid-July?

John Hewitt: I’m going to buy a house. I’m going to invest most of it in buying a house and having a roof over my head. I think it’s a good investment to have. I’ve seen too many poker players go broke after hitting a big score; I’m not going to be one of them. I have my own apartment right now, but it’d be nice to have a house and have an office. I’ll have some place to move around in and, in the future, I should have a good property.

PocketFives.com: When you got down to ten players in the WSOP Main Event, how did you weigh holding on to make the November Nine against trying to chip up?

John Hewitt: I was the person who was most willing to gamble. I didn’t get many hands, but I didn’t want to come back in November with a 20 big blind stack and just pray. Throughout the tournament, I put myself in really good situations to come back in November with a really big stack.

PocketFives.com: On PocketFives.com, the two November Nine members we’ve had the most buzz about are Phil Collins(pictured) and Ben Lamb. Can you talk about those two?

John Hewitt: Both are really nice guys. I was really impressed by Phil’s game and I hope he wins it. He played amazingly throughout. The last two days that I played with him, I thought he was really, really good. I wish him the best for sure.

Ben is a great player and has had a lot of things go his way. A lot of it is just momentum. The confidence you get when you have such a sick Series is ridiculous. You could see him making plays that nobody else at the table was going to do. You can tell the confidence was pulling through for him.

PocketFives.com: How did you get started in poker originally?

John Hewitt: $1 buy-in home games in Costa Rica. It’s ridiculous to think that four years ago, I was playing for $1 buy-ins and now I’m playing for $10,000 buy-ins. I started off playing home games and the poker boom started and everyone was looking at poker as something cool to do. I’ve always been pretty competitive, so as soon as the home games started getting steady, I started buying books, watching videos, and playing online.

I had a few wins at my friend’s house and thought I should go to the casino and try it out. I lost a lot of money, and a year or so down the line, I won my first live tournament for $400. Little did I know what road was coming my way.

I had a lot of help from a Norwegian friend of mine who lives down here in Costa Rica, Lasse faithless Ubostad. He’s a really good player who really helped me out with my game. He believed in me when nobody else believed in me. Out of the blue, back when I was playing $5 sit and gos, he’d back me into the PokerStars Sunday Million. He did that for a long time and he’s a nice guy. He’s a good friend of mine and I appreciate everything he did for me.

PocketFives.com: Seven countries are represented in the WSOP 2011 November Nine(pictured), the most diverse group ever. Does this mean that players worldwide have caught up to those in the U.S. in terms of poker skill?

John Hewitt: For sure. People now understand hands a lot better. There were a few hands in the tournament where multi-level thinking was a requirement. It wasn’t just about what cards you had or what cards the other guy had. It was more like, “What do you think he thinks I have?” It was so tiring, but at the same time, it was really fun.

PocketFives.com: Had you reached the November Nine, would you have wanted to play the final table the next day?

John Hewitt: I would have wanted to play it the next day for sure. I think it’s so bad because everybody knows that, especially in tournaments, there’s a lot of variance. There are moments in life where you feel things going your way and you’re running good or running bad. Pausing the tournament for two or three months just kills everyone’s momentum.

Let’s say someone goes on the biggest downswing of their life in the next couple of months. They’ll come to the November Nine with such a bad mindset that it’s just going to murder them. I think it’s bad for the WSOP to pause the tournament for a couple of months. I think they’re doing that because ESPN basically owns them.

PocketFives.com: The presence of a 30-minute delay on ESPN was new in 2011. Did that change your approach in any way?

John Hewitt: I was surprised it didn’t affect me when the cameras got there. There wasn’t ever a hand when I was trying to steal the cameras or anything; I was just playing. I did what I wanted to do and what I believed was right. The only thing that bothers me is that it makes you play a lot fewer hands, especially on the feature table. The ESPN crew would come around and say, “Pause the action. We’re going to film it.” All of that is ridiculous.

The players are the ones putting up the $10,000 and they’re making money off of what we put in. That was really bad on their part.

PocketFives.com: We understand that you’re going to start traveling the circuitsoon.

John Hewitt: Yeah, for the first time in my life, I’m going to be traveling the circuit. I have a backer who is really happy with me at the moment, the owner of the PokerFarm, and they’ve given me the best opportunity of my life. I’m going to spend about a month-and-a-half or two months on the road in Europe for some EPTs. Hopefully, I’ll have some good results.

Money is a means to an end to me, and that end is the freedom to do whatever I want to do. Hopefully, in the next couple of months or years, I can have some time to myself to do what I want to do.