A week ago, the PokerStars Sunday Storm, an $11 buy-in tournament, celebrated its fourth anniversary. The result: 104,000 entrants and a prize pool that lapped $1 million. Coming in second place when all was said and done was Bulgaria’s Georgi Nikolov (pictured), who is known on PocketFives as dscturrr and earned $56,000 following a five-way deal.

He has been playing poker seriously for two years now and told us, “I always knew somewhere in the back of my head thatit was very realistic for a moment like this to come, but it still feels very insane, very awesome, and I am definitely excited about the opportunities that this score will give me for the future.”

The first time a deal was discussed was during a break. Nikolov spent it away from the computer and consequently missed the offer. Once he saw it, he decided to initiate chop discussions again. In the interim, a player was eliminated, so perhaps he upped his payday unintentionally. He told us, “Everyone agreed on the first numbers we discussed except for one player. He wanted some more cash and so another player and I gave him $2,000.”

Navigating a 100,000-person field has to be quite a feat. He explained, “It is basically what every other MTT on Stars feels like, as the site is famous for its huge entrant numbers. This tournament was way longer, 13 hours or maybe even a little more. It was pretty draining, but you have to be prepared for that scenario when registering for such an event. When you get close to the final table, it gets pretty exciting. It was my first time playing for such a large amount of money with stacks that were so big. In the end, it’s just a No Limit Hold’em tournament, though.”

Staying fresh for 13 hours involved a late night, Hail Mary call to a friend. “Around 3:00am, I was out of stuff to drink, so I called a friend and was like, ‘Please, one time, take a cab and bring me some Red Bulls and come be with me because this is going somewhere. We were shouting and high-fiving after every pot I won.” Nothing like a late night Red Bull delivery.

As far as the money goes, the Bulgarian plans to buy a new car and invest. He also plans to keep grinding. “I’m not a huge car enthusiast, to be honest, but I am pretty sure my first one won’t be super flashy because I have actually booked my drivers course for the month of May, so basically I am not very experienced and prefer the first one to be sort of a test car,” he said of his prospective new ride. Look out, Bulgaria. There’s a new driver on the road.

Nikolov has been playing full-time for the last two years. Before that, he was working for an airline and said, “During that time, I started studying tournament poker and actually had my first a couple of scores then. Before that, I was playing small-stakes cash games.”

Speaking of scores, he has $124,000 in tracked online tournament finishes. He is the 28th ranked player in his home country and the top dog in the city of Ruse.

He closed our interview by sharing the following words of wisdom: “I want to encourage everyone who has goals in our amazing field, and everyone else of course, to keep following them. If you work hard, eventually you are going to get your ‘one time.’“

Congrats to Nikolov on his huge score!

Want the latest poker headlines and interviews? Follow PocketFives on Twitterand Like PocketFives on Facebook.