One of a handful of PocketFivers to receive a $1 million cash badgethis month is Croatia’s marko2701 (pictured). He is the top-ranked player in the capital city of Zagreb and is a brand new member of the PocketFives community. “I feel proud of myself. This is a result of three years of work and dedication to online poker,” he told us in an exclusive interview.

Much of his success began in 2012, when he finished second in the PokerStars Sunday $100 Rebuyfor $42,000 and took down the site’s Sunday Second Chance for another $40,000. Those two scores, the largest we’ve tracked for him, had a profound impact on his career. He explained, “I got more confident in my game, started to play higher limit MTTs, and attended live events more frequently after those two scores. Everything else stayed the same. I still grind about 12 to 14 hours a day.”

marko2701 plays a variety of limits online, from $1 to $1,100, and also enters satellites when they’re available. He said, “It is not a problem for me to focus because I really like grinding and playing poker. Music in the background helps too.”

Besides MTTs, the Croatian has been playing heads-up games on PokerStars. “I wanted to improve my post-flop game at first,” marko2701 said of his affinity for heads-up games. “My friends were all playing only heads-up games, so I had really good coaching, but then I continued to play because I had a really good profit in them. They are kind of relaxing compared to bad beats in MTTs.”

He got started in poker after playing live tournaments at a local poker club. He commented, “At the time, I lost my full-time job and decided to try playing poker for living. At first, I started to play low-stakes sit and gos for about a year and when I built my bankroll, I gradually transferred from medium-stakes sit and gos to low-stakes and medium-stakes MTTs. Everything after that is a result of dedicated grinding and constant learning to improve my game in every area.”

There are more PocketFivers with PLB scores in Croatia(pictured) than you might think – 105 to be exact – and marko2701 is ranked fourth among them. He outlined, “Croatia has a small number of poker players, but together we have pretty good results. We have a few good results in major live events worldwide and, of course, have lots of good strikes in online MTTs. Also, Croatian players are well-known in heads-up cash games. One good thing about Croatia having a small number of players is that we mostly all know each other in person.” Check out our Croatia poker community.

marko2701 has 82 wins in online MTTs over the years and 210 top-three finishes. He stands at $1.1 million in lifetime winnings, the vast majority of which has come on PokerStars. He closed by offering the following words of advice: “Never give up! Learn about poker, talk about poker, and play poker. As long as you love it, you can do it!”

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