In mid-October, Alex KadabraKeating came away with the win in the Full Tilt Poker Sunday Brawl. The weekly $256 buy-in high-stakes bounty tournament drew a field of 2,739 players to create a prize pool approaching $500,000. Keating was one of three members of the online poker community to make an appearance at the final table and banked $111,000. He also came away with a victory in a $1,050 Rebuy No Limit Hold’em Turbo PokerStars SCOOP event in May for nearly a quarter of a million dollars.

PocketFives.com: Thanks for joining us. Congratulations on your win in the Sunday Brawl. Can you walk us through the tournament?

Alex Keating: In the Brawl, you get $40 for every person you knock out, but I don’t think my first knockout came until there were about 30 people left. When we got to the bubble, I lost a pretty big pot and was close to bubbling. Then, once we got down to 40 players or so, I put all of my focus into the Sunday Brawl and put my other tables on the backburner.

I usually err on the tight side in these tournaments, but once we got down to 14 players, I noticed that nobody was playing a pot. Whoever raised seemed to take the blinds every time. When I realized that it was everyone’s goal to make the final table, I started opening every pot regardless of chip stacks and hole cards. People eventually realized that if they didn’t take a stand, they were just going to blind out.

Heads-up, my opponent had about five million to my 2.4 million and we talked some numbers. I think the ICM number was $90,000 for him and the rest for me and he typed in something like, “I will only accept $97,000.” I didn’t want to do that, so we sat back in and his strategy became very obvious.

Since he was 3betting me and playing very aggressively at the final table, he would expect me to think that he would continue the trend. It became obvious that he decided to take a very weak-passive style heads-up hoping that I would pay him off when he had it. He really didn’t fight any of my continuation bets and only bluffed in obvious bluffing spots because he still thought I thought that he was loose and aggressive.

With my momentum, the way he was playing, and the dynamic, I knew there was no offer I could give him that he would be willing to accept, so we just played.

PocketFives.com: Can you talk about a few interesting hands from your SCOOP victory back in May?

Alex Keating: In the SCOOP tournament, nothing exciting happened at the final table until we were three-handed. I opened with Q-4, the big blind called, and it came A-8-6 with two clubs. William Reynolds XOReynolds was short and the big blind (blanconegro) had a decent stack. I thought if I put a lot of pressure on, I could find a way to win the pot because the difference between third and second was massive. People don’t like calling off their stack with no outs, so I bet the flop and he called.

The turn was another club, I bet, and he called. The river was another club. He checked, I put in a large bet, and he folded. Even if the board didn’t run out with clubs there, I probably would have bluffed. It’s pretty tough for him to want to put in that huge river bet when most of his hands are bluff catchers.

The most interesting hand came heads-up. blanconegro limped and I checked with 9-8 of diamonds. The flop come Q-J-6 rainbow and I believe I had a backdoor flush draw. I checked, he bet 60,000, and I wanted to see if I could steal it, so I made it 170,000 or so and he came back with a re-raise to 490,000. I was thinking about all of the hands he would be willing to go all-in with and was pretty sure he would need at least K-Q to 3bet that flop rather than call my raise. However, he limped in, so K-Q and A-Q were pretty much out of the question.

Next, I thought about him having two pair. Q-J would raise pre-flop, so that’s out. I would imagine that Q-6 and J-6 would raise pre-flop, but they might not. I didn’t think he was the type to limp in with A-A or K-K. On top of everything else, I had a gutshot straight draw if my all-in was called, so I had four clean outs to win the tournament. All of this made me move all-in for his effective 1.2 million or so and he folded. Then, it was just a 10 big blind war.

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

Alex Keating: I watched Chris Moneymaker (pictured) on television. I heard people played online and it got me a little curious, so I did the whole PartyPoker thing, deposited $50, and won a bit. All I did was sit and gos, but I remember players at a table bragging about how well they did in an MTT. They suggested I play one, so I bought into a $10 + $1 tournament. Somehow, I found a way to get second place.