When merry month of May came to a close, Austria’s IM_ICMfinished in the top 10 in the Monthly PLB. He final tabled Sunday Majors on back-to-back weekends to start the stanza, finishing third in the PokerStars Sunday Second Chanceon May 6 and scoring a second place in the iPoker $200,000 Guaranteed one week later. The two cashes were worth over $50,000 combined. We caught up with him to talk about his 2,718-PLB point month.

PocketFives: Thanks for joining us. Can you talk about the structure of the iPoker $200K as well as your run in it?

IM_ICM. iPoker tournament structures used to be very fast, so the final tables were quite a gamble, but now they have changed the structures of most of their tournaments. The structure of the iPoker Major is good now and it’s fun playing the tournament. It’s quite soft as well.

I ran okay, but also played very well, I think. The final table wasn’t that soft actually. There were three other PocketFives members, but I managed to find some good spots and run good in showdown poker, which you have to do in tournaments.

PocketFives: You had a big month of May, with a third place in the Second Chance as well. Tell us what went right during the month.

IM_ICM: On the first SCOOP Sunday, I got third in the Sunday Second Chance and the week after, I got second in the iPoker Major. I also managed to win a $50 Rebuy on PokerStars and a small turbo. Although I didn’t do well in the SCOOP events, I can’t really complain.

PocketFives: How has poker been evolving in Austria? PocketFives has over 200 members in our new Austria pokercommunity.

IM_ICM: Poker is much more popular than it used to be. If you are a live poker fan, then Vienna is great because we have some really good casinos. There are some very good poker players in Austria, especially if you also count in the guys who moved to Austria in the last few years.

I am friends with a lot of online players who live in Vienna. It is great knowing these guys and I go out with them from time to time. Getting better at this game is a lot easier when you have the opportunity to talk poker with some great players.

PocketFives: Do you have any aspirations of getting back to #7 worldwide in the PocketFives Rankings? You’re at #61 now.

IM_ICM: Of course. After Vegas, I plan to put in a lot of volume and hope you guys don’t have to scroll down too far in the Rankings list to find IM_ICM!

PocketFives: Do you play any non-Hold’em games?

IM_ICM: I play some PLO, but not really much. I definitely plan to work on some other games after the summer.

PocketFives: Remind us how you got started in poker.

IM_ICM: I used to play some low-limit home games with a few friends, mainly Five Card Draw and later No Limit Hold’em. One my friends said he knew a guy who had won $1,000 playing online poker. I was shocked and couldn’t believe it was possible to win so much money just playing poker on the internet. So, I thought I should give it a shot.

I started on PartyPoker. They gave me a bonus of a few dollars and I won a 45-man SNG. I really don’t know how I did that, as I was pretty bad at the time. Then, I started with micro-stakes cash games, grinded up to mid-stakes cash games, and later switched to SNGs for a while.

I always liked MTTs and started to play some of those, and although I wasn’t really good at the time, I managed to win some money. That was also the time when I started working on my MTT game. I read everything and every book about poker I could find and watched every training video I had access to.

PocketFives: The best No Limit Hold’em MTT player right now is who?

IM_ICM: There are so many brilliant players these days that it’s really not easy to say who is the best, but if I had to name one, I would probably say Dan djk123 Kelly.