Last month, PartyPokerheld a $500,000 guaranteed tournament that attracted just over 3,000 entrants at $200 a pop. A heads-up chop ended matters that saw Belgium’s pablito_21 come away with $83,000. In his words, “It was already 9:00am, I was pretty tired, and because the difference between first and second was so big ($115,000 versus $55,000), I agreed to a chip chop when we were about even.” Playing heads-up for 60-grand early in the morning was definitely not in the cards.

“It feels pretty awesome,” pablito_21 said. “I never could get a decent deep-ish run, so it felt good to bink a major on a different site. The field was relatively soft compared to PokerStars‘ fields and had 3,000 people with lots of satellite winners.”

pablito_21 started heads-up play up 2:1 in chips and felt like he had a reasonable edge. However, his opponent drew out on kings with sevens for the chip lead, which ultimately led to a chop. The top seven players finished with five-figure paydays and the top 405 landed in the money. “It kind of sucked to get kings cracked for such a huge amount of money, but I can’t complain getting heads-up in a major,” the Belgian player said.

He now has over $600,000 in tracked scores, but said poker isn’t a career. Instead, it’s a hobby he enjoys while working full-time as an engineer. He is also a new father and so has seen his time stretched thin between working and changing poop-filled diapers.

“I got into poker at university when a good friend introduced me to it,” the PartyPoker $500,000 Guaranteed chopper said. “I wasn’t really drawn to gambling at all, but the skill and reasoning parts interested me. I started playing random freerolls and after that got going from a small no-deposit bonus. To me, gambling at the time was just for degenerates who didn’t understand the house always wins, but poker is different in that you don’t play versus the house.”

He took to the internet, reading articles on basic poker strategy and began improving. “Right now, most of my relatives and friends are fine with it,” pablito_21 said, “although I don’t talk about it all that much.”

Why would a man who just chopped an online poker tournament for $83,000 not turn to the game full-time? “A couple of reasons,” he said. “For one, I’m not sure how long poker will be around for, so I don’t think it’s viable to consider doing this long-term. I also like doing something more than playing a game for a living. Also, I think I’d go crazy if I played MTTs all the time without having much to do otherwise. The stability of a regular job is definitely nice as well, especially with a family and a kid.”

Last August, pablito_21 chopped the PokerStars Sunday 500 for $62,000 and, one year ago, took down a SCOOP $11 No Limit Hold’em Wrap-Up event for $38,000. All told, pablito_21 has 30 tracked wins online and is the top-ranked player in his home country. You can find him on Stars under the screen name pablito_2121.

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