May the geeforce1 Be With You
Holy crap. This is one of the largest online poker tournament scores we’ve ever reported on here on PocketFives. Last weekend, the Seventh Anniversary PokerStars Sunday Million attracted an enormous field of nearly 50,000 players and ended in a three-way chop. Pulling in $836,000 and officially taking second place was Dave geeforce1 Gent (pictured), who calls Stockton-on-Tees, United Kingdom home.
PocketFives: Thanks for joining us. Tell us how you’re feeling. You turned down a deal originally, right? There was a lot of drama surrounding it.
Dave Gent: It was always going to be a strange final table because although it was obviously a sick amount of money, I had a massively different view on the final table than everyone else. Once I got there, I wanted a shot at the $1 million top prize. If I busted in ninth, I still would have an okay day. It was a gamble I was willing to take.
PocketFives: You ended up just short of $1 million after chopping. Tell us how the deal went down and why you settled on a chop.
Dave Gent: If I had won the Sunday Million, the deal would have gotten me close to $1 million. In hindsight, it was a bad deal. I was in a position to play the other two off each other and use the chips I had finally gotten, so in that respect, it was bad. People say I should have pushed for more money than straight ICM, but that didn’t interest me.
Kasra84, who finished third, seemed quite inexperienced and the pay jump meant a lot to both, so I could have pushed them around more. Once I had a deal, the pressure was off. I relaxed and played worse. The other two relaxed and played with more freedom.
PocketFives: What are your plans for the $836,000?
Dave Gent: It sounds kind of boring, but I’m investing it. I have had a goal for a while to be free from needing poker money to live on. I have bought some buy-to-lets with my fiancée. My plan is to make enough money that I don’t need poker. Then, I think my enjoyment of the game will go up. I’ll be able to play because I want to, not because I am uncertain about the future.
PocketFives: What has been the reaction from your friends and family?
Dave Gent: Facebook, MSN, Skype, and my phone all have been going nuts. To some of my friends and family, it’s even more of a shock, as they don’t play poker and so are unaware of the amount of money that’s possible. To my poker friends, the ones who know me best, it’s a shock because they know I don’t like fields of over 200 people, so 49,000 is just mind-blowing.
PocketFives: What size field did you think would show up? Anywhere close to 49,000?
Dave Gent: I guessed it would be over 40,000, but I wasn’t too sure because I don’t keep tabs on MTT fields in general. The good thing about the field was the structure. It was bad enough so that at least it felt like you were going somewhere. I just one-tabled it while I was playing cash games on Euro sites.
PocketFives: Can you talk about those at the final table who were pressuring you for a deal? At one point, Lee Jones (pictured) was called in to regulate.
Dave Gent: I don’t mind people pushing for a deal, but it’s like they weren’t listening. I would refuse and they wouldn’t even wait another hand before they asked again. Some of the offers put forward to the big stack and the eventual winner were ridiculous. He had a clear advantage and wanted more than an ICM deal. The people who were desperate to deal were offering him less. If they wanted the deal so badly, they needed to give a little.
PocketFives: How did you get started in poker originally and who or what has been helpful along the way?
Dave Gent: I started like most people, depositing small amounts at first, winning at the $5 heads-up games on Paradise Poker, and spinning a roll to take it all to one $1,000 No Limit game, where I busted in 10 minutes. My bankroll management was non-existent. Once I understood that, it helped me move up the levels in cash games.
When I was making more in a day than I would in a week or even a month at my regular job, poker became a no-brainer. I worked at the same place as Paul badpab2 Foltyn (pictured), the William Hill bookmarkers call center. We quit to play poker at about the same time. We didn’t know each other well at work, but as we came close to quitting to play full-time, we got to know each other. We basically started our poker trips at the same time. We ended up taking different paths, but are great friends now.
Then, when I busted moorman1 in a Sunday Major on the Tribecca Network, he befriended Paul and me, asking for advice and questioning every hand we played. moorman1 is a sponge. He never forgets a thing and obviously became an absolute beast of the game.
PocketFives: We take it you weren’t surprised to hear that moorman1 recently reached $9 million in tracked online MTT cashes?
Dave Gent: Not at all. He is a sicko. What was crazy was his lack of live scores for so long.
PocketFives: We understand you want to thank your fiancée.
Dave Gent: Yes. Thanks to my fiancée Giselle. She has superstitions and so she had to find a pair of black socks. If not, I would go out, so I guess she won it for me.
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