Big scores have varied impacts on players’ careers. Some jump up in stakes and volume, some hit the stock market, and others take a little bit of time off. For flyflo, chopping the Full Tilt $350,000 Guaranteed earlier this month means potentially venturing out further into the world of live poker. After all, $68,000 in newfound profit can go quite far. We caught up with flyflo to learn more about his Sunday Major victory.

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PocketFives: Congrats again on the score. Tell us how you’re feeling about it.

flyflo: It was a really nice one for me, especially because I hadn’t run that well on Full Tilt Poker so far. Before this, I had only cashed for $18 on Full Tilt. I started with a few tournaments on PokerStars and Full Tilt that day and the ones on PokerStars went terribly. That was great on the one hand because I was focused on the $350,000 Guaranteed. On the other hand, it was so boring because I didn’t want to open another tournament since it was already late where I am in Europe.

PocketFives: Can you walk us through how the tournament went for you?

flyflo: I think the whole tournament went pretty well because I didn’t get in trouble with the important coin flips. I was able to win all of them, so I doubled up a few times with pocket pairs, A-K, and A-Q. I started to play pretty aggressively and opened wide. Therefore, I had a decent stack size pretty early and was able to make more moves with average hands than others could.

At the final two tables, I had a pretty good stack at the beginning, but was pretty card dead. Then, I was able to double up with Q-Q against A-Q. My stack was okay at the final table, but shrunk early because I didn’t get any hands. I probably played a bit too tight as well, but I did this because there were very few aggressive players at the table.

Then, a few players busted and the big stacks had up to four times my stack, so I adjusted my game play to have a little more aggression. It worked out pretty well and we got down to three players. Once the three of us had almost the same stack, I offered a deal, but another player refused. I took him out three or four hands later with 4-4 against A-Q.

I was chip leader at the time with 5.6 million. The second place stack had 3.7 million and the player I took out had 1.6 million, so we made a deal. I received $55,000 and the other player got $50,000. We played for $13,800 and there were 44 hands heads-up.

PocketFives: How will this score change your poker career or your life?

flyflo: The amount is pretty nice, but it won’t change anything. I have a full-time job within the private equity industry, so everything is fine financially, but this helps. Poker-wise, it is nice as well. Maybe I will add a live tournament to my schedule.

PocketFives: How do you juggle your full-time job and poker right now?

flyflo: That’s pretty tough actually. Right now, it’s easier because I am living by myself, but that will change soon since my girlfriend will be moving in. Right now, I am only able to play in the evening after work and in the evening hours on Sundays. I am not able to play on Fridays or Saturdays.

PocketFives: How did you get started in poker originally?

flyflo: I was first exposed to poker during Christmas in 2005. I was at my mother’s house and it was pretty boring. Therefore, I was watching TV and wondering how they could make a show out of this boring card game called poker. It all changed within a few hours and I fell in love with the game. One day later, I opened my first account on PokerStars. I just played for fun because I was working as a management consultant and was full-time there. I tried to learn the game by playing. I didn’t get in touch with the theory at all to start with.

PocketFives: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

flyflo: When I take a closer look at the last few years, I think I didn’t have a clue about many things for a while. I didn’t find the right kind of poker games, but it all changed in 2011. I started to take the whole thing more seriously. After that, I was more focused and am spending a lot of time on theoretical issues within the game. I think that has helped and also think that a stable private life has helped a lot to improve my game.

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