In the October 30th running of the PokerStars $100 Sunday Rebuy, Canada’s Ryan ryanghallHall (pictured) came away with a win and boosted his home country’s GDP by $55,000. The un-chopped tournament drew exactly 900 players, who created nearly a $300,000 prize pool. Amazingly, this cash isn’t the largest for the 259th player in the PocketFives Poker Rankings, as his largest intake came in August 2008 in a $300 Rebuy FTOPS event.

According to Hall, the $100 Rebuy win marked the fourth largest cash of his burgeoning online poker career and came after he entered heads-up play as a 5:1 underdog. Hall explained, “I just tried to play really aggressively and it worked out.” When three tables remained, Hall got his chips in with pocket tens against A-K and hit what ended up being a one-outer on the river. Hall jested, “That was kind of nice, but you have to get lucky like that to win a big tournament.”

Despite being down 5:1 in chips, Hall turned down an opportunity to chop heads-up. On his logic for not wanting to deal, Hall told us, “I don’t normally chop. It’s so easy to come back; if you double up, you’re nearly equal. I didn’t really play any big hands and just chipped up slowly heads-up, which is ideal since there’s less risk involved. My opponent played pretty tight heads-up, so that allowed me to do that.” He ultimately edged out Brazil’s Pablo pabritz Brito Silva, who raked in $40,000.

If you’re not familiar with the $100 Rebuy on PokerStars, or just want to know how a pro approaches the tournament, we asked Hall for his basic strategy. He responded, “It’s really just like any tournament. You try to raise lots of hands in position, be aggressive, bet a lot, and raise a lot. It’s the only way to accumulate chips.”

We also asked Hall to compare how he approaches the $100 Rebuy with, say, the $5 Rebuy: “You’re definitely going to need to be more aggressive than in a smaller-stakes tournament. Some people who might play $5 tournaments probably watch the $100 Rebuy and think, ‘WTF?’ not realizing that A-Q or A-J in position against a 3bet can be the nuts, whereas it might be a fold in a low-stakes tournament. You have to push every mathematical edge in the $100 Rebuy. In a tournament full of bad players, there’s occasionally time to wait for a better spot because you’re such a favorite.”

Following Black Friday in the United States, we’ve had about 40 players take advantage of our Poker Refugeesservice and relocate to a poker-friendly country to continue their craft. Hall gave us a preview of some of the sites he’s been privileged to play on being a Canuck: “They’re softer. I play on EuroPoker, William Hill, Everest Poker, and PartyPokerfor now and will probably add 888 soon.”

He added, “There are disadvantages too. Some sites make you convert money and rip you off through the exchange, so I don’t play there. The sites I play on are the sites I feel safe on.”

Hall got his start in poker by competing in play money games on PartyPoker and Paradise Poker back in the day. The latter gave him $2 free, which he parlayed into a bankroll through the room’s $0.02/$0.04 Limit games. From there, he explained to us, “A bunch of my friends were getting into it, so I decided to give it a try. I definitely didn’t get into the game because of Chris Moneymaker or the WPT or anything; I’d never heard of any of that.”

Finally, Hall wanted to give a shout out to PokerXFactor. Visit PokerStars for more details on the weekly $100 Sunday Rebuy.