Last month, the United Kingdom’s Michael Chi mczhangZhang (pictured) came away with the win in the 888 Poker Mega Deep and booked a $25,000 payday. There were 783 entrants that week at a buy-in of $215 each, meaning the prize pool swelled to $156,000.

“I’ve been waiting for a big score for a while,” Zhang told PocketFives. “It’s good not to blow up between eighth and 14th places like most times.” Well said.

It was the 20th online MTT win we’ve tracked for him and PocketFivers scooped 44% of the Mega Deep’s prize pool.

Just before the final table, Zhang mixed his game up a bit. He got lucky with A-K against A-A with 14 players left and proceeded to raise and 3bet every hand. He explained, “I was the chip leader and wanted to put maximum pressure on everyone. At the final table, I managed to put pressure on a lot of them, but I also made quite a few spewy plays.” He was one of four PocketFivers to appear at the final table.

Zhang, who calls Nottingham (pictured) home, will invest a chunk of his $25,000 payday into playing higher stakes online. He’ll also travel to play tournaments and cash games on the EPT circuit. According to the Hendon Mob, he has $155,000 in live tournament winnings and is fresh off a Main Event final table appearance two weeks ago at the WPT’s stop in Nottingham.

Full-time, he’s studying mathematics at the University of Birmingham, but considers himself a poker player, as he “just needed to get the degree out of the way.” Zhang is the top-ranked player in Nottingham and is #55 in the highly competitive UK poker community.

Zhang found poker when he was 16 years old. One of his classmates brought a chip set to school and Zhang began playing for fun with his peers. He eventually found online poker and, as they say, the rest is history.

Since then, he has branched out into live poker and cash games, telling us, “When I play live, I usually play cash games, as tournaments are quite long and grueling and not really a reliable source of income. Recently, it has been pretty fun to go to live events, as you get to travel and play new, exciting tournaments.”

Zhang took third in the UKIPT Main Event in Bristol for $41,000. If you’ve never been to the English town, which the River Avon runs through, Zhang relayed, “It was a nice city. There was not as much to do in terms of poker, but it’s nice to get away sometimes from playing so much online.”

Outside of poker, you can catch Zhang playing football, badminton, and video games. He has also gotten into streaming on Twitch.

If you don’t already have an 888 Poker account, sign up through the links on PocketFives to get a special 100% up to $600 deposit bonus, $88 free in most locations, and one free month of Tournament Poker Edge or CardRunners poker training. Click here to get started.

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