Earlier this month, Nayeem Syed (pictured), known in the online poker world as dancingbudha, chopped the PokerStars Sunday 500 two ways for $50,000, far and away his largest online poker score to date.

“I’m feeling very good,” he told PocketFives in an exclusive interview. “I set a target where I would play in the WSOP this year if I could win $50,000 this month. I was very glad to hit my target and also achieve my personal best record.”

He chopped heads-up with fellow PocketFiver vip25459, who earned $63,000 and officially finished in first place. “I think the deal was very good, especially considering my opponent had a 4:1 chip advantage over me,” Syed said. “He actually offered to take $59,000, so I missed a chance to take back $53,000, but I wasn’t thinking right after 12 hours of poker.”

He’ll use $20,000 of his $50,000 score to buy into the WSOP Main Event and preliminary tournaments. Another $5,000 will go toward WSOP expenses, while the rest will be put to good use on a personal level.

Syed has never been to Las Vegas before, so this year’s outing should be especially memorable. He told us, “I have been trying to go to Vegas since 2011 when I first got into poker and saw Ben BenbaLamb (pictured) make it so deep in the Main Event. I still can’t believe I am doing it for real now. The Main Event will be an amazing experience. I am just hoping to play my A-game, take it one step at a time, and come back with some good results hopefully!”

The London resident works full-time in IT and is hoping to make the formal jump to poker in the near future. Much of his strategy and approach to the game comes from his background in chess. He explained, “I used to play chess at competitive levels. When I saw some very strong players suddenly disappearing, I learned they moved to poker. That’s what got me interested too, as they were saying the money is a lot better in poker. I took me a while to work out a strategy that gives somewhat consistent results.”

He added, “Poker is a lot less complex then chess, but still needs a lot of accurate calculations for a person to do well. My whole strategy involves trying to make poker as technical a game as possiblein order to reduce the luck element.”

Let’s get back to Syed’s regular job. He’s a DevOps engineer and manages all of the infrastructure and the cloud behind various websites and software. The Brit explained, “It’s not something I enjoy the most, but they pay me well. It’s really difficult to balance work and poker, as tournament poker can take a lot of hours. My plan is to leave my job in the next three to six months and focus on poker and my property business, which I want to do more of.”

He closed by saying that PocketFives was doing “an amazing job” and added, “Thank you for picking me up for an interview so quickly after the tournament. I totally wasn’t expecting that! Hopefully I can inspire others that other amateurs can also make good results if they work on their game and stay persistent.”

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