Only seven players have ever amassed more than four Triple Crownshere on PocketFives. Doing so is no easy feat, as a person needs to win three $10,000 prize pool tournaments across three sites tracked for the PocketFives Poker Rankingsin the same seven-day period. PocketFives Traininginstructor Russell rdcrsn Carson (pictured) recently grabbed Triple Crown #4 and could soon join that elite list of players.

A win in a PokerStars.fr SCOOP tournament for $20,000 ignited his Triple Crown fire. One day later, Carson came away with a victory in the Sunday Major on Lock Poker for $27,000. Finally, it was off to PokerStars.com, where a victory in a $25 No Limit Hold’em Hyper Turbo was his for $3,800. Perhaps more importantly, sealed the deal for his fourth Triple Crown.

The PokerStars.fr tournament, the first leg of the Triple Crown, was a€100 No Limit Hold’em Six-Max Hyper Turbo that guaranteed €80,000. “I had a pretty steady chip-up throughout the tournament,” Carson told us in an exclusive interview. “PokerStars.fr is a nice mix into the schedule these days. You have to love playing against the French and it’s the same software as PokerStars.com, so have to love that too. It’s the best software running right now and has always been the best for me.”

Carson added that PokerStars.fr “has a solid schedule and smaller field sizes, which are nice to balance variance. Their Majors don’t have as many players as the dot-com site, so it’s a good experience on a few different levels.” The win was Carson’s first in a WCOOP or SCOOP event.

Two of Carson’s Triple Crown wins came in Hyper Turbo tournaments, so we asked the PocketFives MTT Training instructor why he’s found success in that format: “Turbos in general are fun and have a bigger edge than what most people make out. The Hypers not as much, but the SCOOP Hyper had a better structure than most Hypers, with bigger starting stacks and more levels mixed in, so it played somewhere between a Hyper and a Turbo.”

Carson is one of the most visible instructors at PocketFives Training. “I really like to put hand histories through the replayer for videos,” Carson remarked when asked what we can expect to see from him going forward. “Then, I can take more time going over hands and discuss more options. I can focus on that specific tournament at the time and don’t have other tables going on in the background. If I have a hand history in the replayer, I can take as much time as I’d like to go over a spot and discuss options.”

Carson added, “Also going back on it, I’m able to see mistakes I made, as it’s the only tournament I’m focusing on at the time.”

When we spoke to Carson, he was camped out in Berlin, Germany for a PokerStars EPT event. He unfortunately had busted out on Day 1 this year, but can now be found in Monaco. Does Carson play online when he’s entrenched in a major live event? “I always try to play Sunday online,” Carson responded. “I was able to get in a few days in Vienna. I’m not a major fan of the side events, although I do plan to hit a couple of them up in Monaco. I would have played online in Berlin, but I was catching up with my sister in Rome for the weekend.”

Carson stands at #11 worldwide in the Rankings, and was once as high as #2 worldwide back in 2008. The Canadian is #3 in his own country and admitted that he does not currently have many Rankings-related goals: “It’s an added bonus when I find a hot streak and can climb up the list, but I don’t really focus on that. I’d be happy to be #1, don’t get me wrong, but it may be because of the tournaments won and money that I made along the way. At some point, I would like to make it to #1. Chris moorman1 Moorman (pictured) was too good when I was close to the top, so I didn’t really get the chance.”

By the way, Moorman owns a PocketFives record 11 Triple Crowns.

If you want to learn the ins and outs of MTTs from instructors like Carson, then sign up for PocketFives Training. You can also sign up for a PocketFives Partner site through PocketFives and make a deposit to get one free month of PocketFives Training with the sign-up fee waived, a $65 value. There are no play-through requirements for this offer. Get started.