About the same time as the World Series of Poker kicked off this year from Las Vegas, Mario Alina (pictured), who goes by Epakfaileron PocketFives, chopped the PokerStars $100 Rebuy three ways for $32,000. There were almost 900 entrants and Alina earned the third largest payout of the group.

“I feel pretty good,” Alina told PocketFives from his native Slovakia. “Hard work pays off, but I have a lot more to accomplish. I’m going to do my best, so you will hear about me more often.” It was his third largest online MTT cash ever, trailing two final tables in the Sunday Million last year.

Alina took one rebuy in the tournament and said, “From that point, it went pretty well. I won a flip eight-handed that really set me up for success.” There were five members of the PocketFives community at the nine-max final table, but Alina was the only one to participate in the chop.

He plans to fund his bankroll with his $32,000 in winnings and also wants to travel to a few live events. He has $326,000 in online MTT winnings and is the second-ranked player in our Slovakia poker community.

Alina final tabled the Sunday Million in back-to-back months last year, once for $165,000 and once for $46,000, or $211,000 total. “That was so big for me, as you can imagine,” he said of his $165,000 haul for getting second in October. “It was life-changing money and a huge boost to my bankroll. I hope it was the start of something much bigger. I started playing a little bit higher, but not that much.”

Before switching over to poker full-time, Alina was in school and scraping money via part-time jobs. He found the game originally through home games with friends and said, “I really loved it. Then, one of my friends and I started to take the game more seriously. I’ve always been a gamer and when I learned there was a game I could win money in, you can imagine my interest in it was high.”

Away from poker, Alina plays the paintball cousin Airsoftand hangs out with friends. He is one of 208 registered PocketFivers from Slovakia (pictured), whose residents have $434,000 in tournament winnings in the last three months. The top-ranked player in Slovakia is Tondash, who has 346 cashes in the last three months and is #1,573 worldwide.

The Sunday $100 Rebuy runs weekly on PokerStars, the largest site in the world. If you don’t have a PokerStars account, sign up through the links on PocketFives and get a 100% up to $600 deposit bonus and one free month of PocketFives Training with no signup fee. Click here to create your account.

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