Once you’ve gotten two qualifying Triple Crownwins, the race is on for #3. Remember, you need wins in three $10,000 prize pool tournaments across three sites tracked for our PocketFives Rankingswithin seven days. Two wins, while impressive, won’t get you a Triple Crown. One of the award’s most recent winners is Korea’s jjyykk, who told us, “I joined PocketFives and saw all of the badges you could get, so I have been hunting one for a while.” The hunt is officially over, and his dog is pictured.

He kept finding himself on the brink of a Triple Crown, but couldn’t quite get over the hump: “I kept coming close: runner-ups and third and fourth place finishes for the last leg, so it feels great and I want more.”

His Triple Crown quest wrapped up on March 12 and included wins on 888 Poker, Paddy Power, and PokerStars. He said the first two legs were pretty standard, but the third posed the most trouble: “The last one is always the hardest because you sweat the heads-up. I lost twice heads-up before I won the $5 Turbo on PokerStars and it was the last day for the Triple Crown, so it was tough closing it out.”

The Korean player has nearly 4,000 tracked online MTT scores in his PocketFives profile, one of the largest numbers this author has seen. On his volume, jjyykk remarked, “2012 was the first year I was actually good at tournaments. I kind of sucked before even though I turned pro in 2009. I was going for the Yearly TLB prizes, so I just played a lot. I play a lot of low-stakes Turbos, so it probably looks like more volume than it is, but I try to stick to stuff I have a clear edge in.”

We can give jjyykk the superlative of being the top ranked player in Korea. We only have 15 PocketFivers from the country who have generated scores. “I think I’m lucky because Korea is a small country,” jjyykk said of his #1 ranking. “But, as many people know, Korea has a lot of pro gamers and it’s a small but talented country. I see PokerStars running events here and poker will boom in Asia.”

jjyykk is originally from across the Pacific Ocean in California and got his start in poker after placating Indian casinos during high school. He played live $3/$6 Limit Hold’em at Casino Morongo in Southern California and then found his way online to PartyPoker during college. He recalled, “I won a ticket to some big tournament PartyPoker was running and made a deep run.” He started playing No Limit after that.

jjyykk trekked from California to Korea after Black Friday: “It was just a lot more comfortable to come to Korea. My family is already established here and Seoul is an amazing city, even for Westerners. There are a lot of small things you take for granted that we all lost. My setup is pretty weak now. I went from a 30-inch side monitor to a cheap 27-inch one since that’s all I could get, so now I stack tables instead of tile.”

In addition to stacking instead of tiling, he’s playing in the middle of the night: “The MTT grind in Asia starts around 1:00am and I play that schedule every day, so usually I wake up at night and play until 10:00am or 11:00am. It’s taking a toll and I’m thinking of moving to Europe or Canada.”

He wanted to close by sending a shout out to Poker Pwnage, which became PocketFives Training, and instructors Alex AssassinatoFitzgerald (pictured), chardrian, and Russell rdcrsnCarson for influencing his game. He added, “I’m just a huge fan of PocketFives. I really appreciate how you guys keep score for us. I play a lot of stuff I wouldn’t have played just to win badges, so it’s like a video game.” You’re quite welcome!

Visit our Triple Crown Wall of Champions to learn how to win your own.

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