A Triple Crownis no easy feat. We have 120,000 registered members here on PocketFives and so far in January, just 12 of them, or a scant 0.01%, have managed to record one. The second largest Triple Crown in terms of the number of PLB Points in January belonged to Billyth3kid(pictured), who recorded wins in the 888Mega Deep, PokerStars Hot $109, and Full Tilt $10,500 Guaranteed for a combined $36,000 and 590 PLB Points.

We caught up with Billyth3kid, who calls Cheshire, U.K. home, to talk about the latest badge that has been added to his profile. By the way, he is MR_LITHUANIA on 888 despite the fact that he’s from the U.K., which for some reason makes us laugh. So, we’re going to refer to him for the rest of this article as MR_LITHUANIA.

PocketFives: Congratulations on the Triple Crown. Tell us how you’re feeling about it.

MR_LITHUANIA: Pretty chuffed. It all happened so fast. I managed to ship the 888 Mega Deep and then luckbox the Hot $109. Then, I just didn’t sleep until I shipped one on Full Tilt. It’s pretty weird. A year ago, I never would have imagined I would be getting a Triple Crown.

PocketFives: Talk about winning the 888 Mega Deep. That was pretty big for you and it’s a tournament we don’t talk about very often on PocketFives.

MR_LITHUANIA: I accumulated a decent stack. I continued to play aggressively and that seemed to work. A few friends backed me for 10% each, but it was still about double my biggest previous win. So, I am pretty chuffed, but happier to finally ship this tournament and get a Triple Crown than I am about the money.

PocketFives: Can you talk about the structure of the Mega Deep and how you have fared in it in the past?

MR_LITHUANIA: Sure. You start with 10,000 in chips, just like the Million only with a much longer clock. So, there’s a lot of poker. People are always pretty deep, so there are a lot of bets going on. You have quite a bit of time to be patient, but then, of course, there’s always the flipside. We know a lot of people are thinking like this, so we open a lot and 3bet a lot to try to exploit them. It seems to work well, as I guess you have a lot of players who don’t get that deep in big MTTs, so they often so crumble under the pressure.

It’s pretty soft too. There are some absolute donks, but also a lot of regs, some of whom I guess deposit on 888 just to play in these majors. It’s pretty top-heavy, which means as it got deeper, I became a lot more hyper-aggressive, punishing people who wanted to ladder to give me a better chance at getting first place.

PocketFives: You come from a long line of really solid U.K. pokerplayers. Is there something in the water over there?

MR_LITHUANIA: I think they put something in the Coco Pops over here. I can’t speak for everyone, but this is my third year playing poker for a living. I’ve put in a lot of hours over the last few years, almost hermit-like. A lot of practice and studying have happened in the last few years and I’ve done quite a lot of networking and learned a lot from the people I’ve met, namely jenbizzle, Bit2Easy, MoneyBagzPoker, and judgedredd13. Studying, however, is something I need to get back into, as I’ve neglected it lately and believe it’s going to take some of that if I want to get to the next level.

PocketFives: How did you get started in poker originally?

MR_LITHUANIA: I first played at a friend’s house. We didn’t even know the rules and didn’t know what blinds were. For the big blind, if we didn’t look at our cards, we didn’t have to pay it, hence “big blind.” Even then, I used to love it. Then after a while, I started to mess around on Facebook poker, and by mess around, I literally mean play for pretend money for six hours straight (sad, I know) until one day I decided to deposit.

PocketFives: When and how did you decide to play professionally?

MR_LITHUANIA: I deposited on PKR and managed to luckbox the steps on there. After that, I really got into poker, started reading magazines, buying books, and posting on forums. I started grinding nine-man sit and gos on Absolute Poker when I decided I was ready to take things seriously.

I was playing $1 games going by a 50 BI rule. This was while I was at university. By the time I decided to leave university and come home, I had built my bankroll up to $3,000 or $4,000. I had to use this money to get myself into a flat, and after depositing, I only had $1,000, so it was back to the grindstone again. I did this for quite a while, just about scraping my living.

I decided to get a job in a call center, but as the months went on, I was making more and more from poker, not a lot, but more than I was from working the “real job,” so at that point, I decided to quit and play poker as my sole income source. It was around this point that I started to concentrate solely on MTTs. It wasn’t all fun and games. Three years ago, I was playing poker for a living, but was scraping the barrel for funds. I’ve come a long way.

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