In late September, Goran mandza17Mandic (pictured) final tabled the PokerStars Sunday 500 and earned $25,000. He cashed for $27,000 in a WCOOP event the week before and is a former Supernova on PokerStars. Mandic has the distinction of being the #2 ranked player in Croatia, so we caught up with him to break down his big day.

PocketFives: Congrats on final tabling the Sunday 500. Tell us how you’re feeling about it.

Goran Mandic: Thanks. I’m feeling very good, but I am kind of sad because I didn’t take it down.

PocketFives: Walk us through how the tournament went in general. How did you end up going out?

Goran Mandic: The start of the tournament went badly. I was down to 5,000 in chips from a starting stack of 10,000 at one point in the first few levels, but I managed to build my stack later and had around 80,000 to 90,000 when we approached the bubble. After we hit the money, I was pretty card dead and down to five or six big blinds. Then, I got aces and doubled up and, after that, it all went my way. I won a few more important pots and had a really good stack.

I came to the final table second in chips with a really solid game overall, picking good, low-variance spots because the structure of the Sunday 500 is amazing and allows you to wait for the right spots.

There were a few regs at the final table I had played with already, so I knew what to expect from them. When we were seven-handed, I doubled up bartek901 with A-Q < A-K when he open-shoved for 15 big blinds. Later on, I ran into bigdog6391's aces versus my jacks and when we were down to six-max, I had 10 big blinds and lost with A-J to A-J suited. All I can say from this is that I played a solid game close to the whole tournament. I’m especially glad how I played during the late stages. I was so focused on every decision I made even though it was 9am, so finally I can say that I learned a lot from it overall. PocketFives: How is poker viewed in Croatia (pictured)? What does the general public think about it?

Goran Mandic: The Croatian community is very, very small. The general public is not very familiar with how online and live poker work. I can definitely say that the whole nation is very conservative, so that might be the reason most people still look at poker like gambling.

PocketFives: How have your friends and family reacted to your poker success?

Goran Mandic: They are happy for my success because to be realistic it’s so hard these days to make any kind of money, especially in Croatia where the financial situation isn’t that good and more importantly, you have the freedom to work when you want, which is priceless. My biggest supporter is my girlfriend Sonja. She also plays poker from time to time and understands how stressful and hard of a job it can be.

PocketFives: How did you get started in poker? Why was poker interesting to you?

Goran Mandic: I played home games a few times with my friends for fun and later I had more passion for the game. I eventually played some small, low-stakes heads-up sit and gos online, made Supernova, and binked a Supernova freeroll for $100,000. After that, I started to play more MTTs online and live.

Probably the most crucial point of my career is when I met my current backer, cal42688 (pictured), at one of live stops in Austria and started working with him as well as other guys like blanconegro. I learned a lot from both of them. It’s a game of competition and I love doing it.

PocketFives: You had a huge day that Sunday, as you final tabled the Sunday 500 and ran deep in a WCOOP event. Tell us what was going through your head.

Goran Mandic: Yeah, that was a sick day. Going deep in those two tournaments on the same day is an amazing feeling, but besides that I had a great WCOOP with two more final tables and a few other runs. It is definitely a good feeling when you go deep in tournaments like this. It was a really sick grind the whole three weeks, but I enjoyed it a lot.