In mid-December, one of the fastest risers in the PocketFives Poker Rankings, Mark RenRad 01Darner (pictured), came away with the win in the PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up. His reward for winning the tournament un-chopped was a big one, $154,000. The field was nearly 5,000 players strong and almost $1 million was paid out to the top 720 finishers. Darner, who was once ranked as high as #3 worldwide, can currently be found at #17. We sat down with him to walk through his largest tracked cash to date and his first six-figure haul.

He’s rebounded from the mid-30s to #17 in the Rankings and hopes that his latest mega-score vaults him even higher. He told PocketFives in an exclusive interview, “Hopefully this shoots me back up in the Rankings a bit. I was in a bit of a dry spell, but was still grinding my ass off. I’m glad I was lucky enough to get a bink before going to see my family for the holidays.” A very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year is now in the works for the Florida transplant.

Darner’s Sunday Warm-Up victory came during PokerStars’ 10th anniversary celebration. Therefore, the field was considerably larger than normal. On his mentality heading into the tournament, Darner told us, “I think you have to switch gears. I was short-stacked from about 25- to nine-handed. I played tight and waited for my spots. Then, at the final table, the chip leader (harif1988) had all of the chips and I was lucky enough to double off him early after coming in as the short stack. At that point, I just let him run the table over until we were three-handed and the stacks started to even up.”

Darner and the rest of the final three looked at chopping the tournament, but the group could not come to an accord. On why he steered away from a deal, Darner told us, “It wasn’t a good deal for me, so we played it and I got to heads-up. My opponent offered to chop again and I declined because I thought I had an edge. I got lucky enough to get the outright win.”

Fourth place in the blockbuster Sunday Warm-Up went to Nick fu_15 Maimone, who was once as high as #17 in the PocketFives Rankings. On Maimone’s game down the stretch, Darner evaluated, “He was the reg I had the most hands on at the table. He is super-aggressive and tough to play against, but at the final table, he was very short. He did a good job of laddering up to fourth.”

Darner formerly lived in Florida, but Black Friday sent him to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico to continue playing online poker. He recapped his experience in Cabo, Cabo, Cabo: “It’s worked out well, but I miss my family and friends who aren’t living out here with me. But, I basically came to play as much as I can as often as I can. I got off to a good start, winning the $162 Sunday Six-Max the first Sunday I was here. Then, I lost or broke even for like three months, which was pretty frustrating when you move countries to grind and make money. Then, I binked the Warm-Up, so all the hard work paid off.”

He’s now back in Florida for the holidays and will celebrate his birthday on New Year’s Day. From there, he’ll be traveling south for a major live poker tournament: “I’ll be off to the PCAin the Bahamas. I won my package already and will be going out there with my brother (Mike Darner) and my boys Corey ratsauce89Thompson and Marty TheLipoFund Mathis.”

Other online poker scores for Darner this year include a $29,000 haul for winning the PokerStars $150,000 Guaranteed in April. One month earlier, he took down the Full Tilt $40,000 Guaranteed for $27,000. Check out all of his scores by visiting Darner’s PocketFives profile.

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