It’s not every day you win a tournament with 34,000 entrants. How often does that actually happen in your lifetime? Once? Never? For Reed badbeatmeHensel (pictured), the feat occurred late last month in the PokerStars Sunday Storm, an $11 buy-in tournament that shelled out a prize pool of $346,000 after 34,600 people signed up. First place was worth a commanding $30,000.

“It felt really good,” Hensel told PocketFives when asked for his reaction to winning the mega-field tournament. “I don’t really have an approach to it. Obviously, I just register for it every week not really expecting much since it takes a lot of luck to outlast 35,000 people. Plus, it starts at a bad time with lots of bigger tournaments going on, so I can’t give it much focus for the first few hours.”

The Sunday Storm stretched for 10 hours. Hensel remembered, “It’s kind of surreal because I don’t remember a lot of it. It didn’t really become real until there were like 30 people left and I won a huge three-way all-in on the river where I made a nut flush against another flush and someone else’s trips. I made the money with not many chips and just won a bunch of pre-flop all-ins. From like 500 people left until that pot, I still didn’t think it was that likely that I could win. Plus, I was deep in the Big $109, so most of my attention was on that tournament, as the level of play is really high.”

Hensel is about to pass $1.7 million in tracked cashes in his PocketFives profile, so the Storm certainly isn’t his first big score. He took down the UB $200K in 2007 for $45,000 and final tabled a tournament on Full Tilt two years ago for $46,000. He got his start by catching “Rounders” on television and then seeing Chris Moneymaker blast through the field of the 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event.

Also helping him get into poker were his friends, who held home games. He recalled, “I generally was a winner in the home games. Then, I opened accounts on PartyPoker and PokerStars while in school and went from there.”

Hensel attended the University of Kansas (pictured) and played tournaments three to five nights per week while he was enrolled. He explained, “When I had 1.5 years left in school, I was making enough and having a good time, so I wanted to give poker a shot. I’m really proud that I stayed in school and got my diploma even though my grades were definitely affected by the hours on the tables.”

What if poker hadn’t worked out? What would Hensel be doing? He owns a business degree from Kansas, so he would likely be in that field in some capacity. He added that the phone giant Sprint is a major employer in his hometown of Kansas City, so he could conceivably be working for that firm if grinding online had been a bust.

In order to continue playing poker after Black Friday, Hensel headed down to the poker hotspot of Playa del Carmen, Mexico, where he has lived for the last two years. On whether he makes it back to the heartland very often, Hensel explained, “I’ve lived here for two years and have been back to the United States 12 times since Black Friday. I’m at that age (28) where all of my friends from home are getting married, so there are lots of weddings right now.”

He wanted to send shout outs to the Playa del Carmen crew: buckguy 2200, pokerguru740, oleIRONhelm, WineEmDineEm, ph1shman420, LilFishAtL, and UHBigTex.

You can catch the Sunday Storm every week on PokerStars. If you don’t already have a PokerStars account, sign up through PocketFives’ link and make a deposit to get one free month of PocketFives MTT Training. You’ll also get a 100% up to $600 sign-up bonus. Click here for PocketFives’ PokerStars link.

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Image courtesy Hendon Mob