November 18 was a groundbreaking day for one member of the Israel pokercommunity here on PocketFives, timorm1. What happened, you ask? The HaMerkaz resident made a pair of Sunday Major final tables on the same day, chopping the Full Tilt Poker Sunday Brawl three ways for $32,000 and taking fifth in the same site’s $500,000 Guaranteed for another $22,000. One day and $54,000 later, timorm1 was on cloud nine.

“It feels great,” timorm1 perhaps understated to PocketFives in an exclusive interview. “It was great timing too after a rough couple of months. The WCOOP on PokerStars was pretty bad for me. I was taking a shot playing higher than I usually do and felt like I didn’t bring my A-game to the series.”

In addition to a rough outing in the annual PokerStars WCOOP, timorm1 told us that he was fresh off a few sub-par live poker trips. He summarized, “I was kind of low on confidence. Finally, over the last couple of weeks, I’ve felt like I’m back to playing my A-game. I was hungry to grind and it felt like it all connected that Sunday.”

The Sunday Brawl attracted over 1,100 runners and forked over a prize pool that topped $230,000, or nearly five times its guarantee. The top 135 players finished in the money and timorm1 chopped with Mike Gags30 Gagliano and PokerStars member america_lol.

We asked timorm1 to walk us through the chop: “As soon as we got three-handed, we were pretty much even in chips. Gags suggested that we have a look at the numbers and we both agreed to do so. We finally agreed to an ICM chop, which was pretty close to an even three-way chop because we were so close in chips, and left just over $4,000 to the winner. I wasn’t super eager to chop three ways, but I thought about it for a while and decided to secure second place money in a spot that could be pretty high variance with the third guy being very aggressive.”

Gagliano (pictured) officially won that weekend’s Sunday Brawl for $36,000 and has been a member of PocketFives since 2007. He’s a PocketFives Training instructor and, according to timorm1, “I have played with him before and we have some history together. Also, he has been coaching a friend of mine for a while, so I had a certain idea of his game. He played very well.”

timorm1 evaluated, “Up to the point we were left three-handed and chopped, Gags was kind of playing on a low gear, preserving a good stack he had and a tight image at the table. Then, three-handed and heads-up after the chop, he opened his game up considerably and used his tight image very well. Heads-up, I pretty much felt crushed. I wasn’t able to connect on too many boards and Gags was putting on relentless, excellent pressure and gave me a very hard time. I felt he played better and deserved the win.”

In the Full Tilt $500,000 Guaranteed, the final table featured a former #1 playerin the PocketFives Poker Rankings, p0cket00 (pictured), who took seventh place for $16,000. “p0cket00 was actually short-stacked before when we played on the same table with three tables left in the tournament,” timorm1 told us. “Then, he doubled up through me. Once we got to the final table, I was trying to play a bit on the tight side, see who was up to what, and use good spots to pick up chips. Pretty soon, some of the short stacks busted and some aggressive dynamics evolved with the top regs left, who weren’t going to just sit back and wait.”

He continued, “p0cket00 became short-stacked and eventually shoved over a late position open of mine. I had 5-5 and felt like I couldn’t open it if I weren’t going to call the likely shove, so I called and held against his K-Q.” The top 360 players finished in the money after over 3,000 showed up.

He got into poker courtesy of his father, who taught him to play Five Card Draw when he was a kid. He started to watch Hold’em on TV in the early 2000s when ESPN began showing the WSOP. He elaborated, “When a friend bought a Hold’em kit with the cards and chips, we started playing friendly sit and gos for like $5.” He joined PocketFives in mid-2010 and has recorded 32 tracked MTT wins since.

As we said, timorm1 is a member of the Israelpoker community. We asked him for the dish on how the game is viewed in his home country: “There hasn’t been a precedent to establish poker as a skill game, and gambling and luck games are forbidden here, so people still have that old idea of poker astaking place in underground rooms filled with smoke and gangster types sitting around playing cards. There is a pretty good and growing community of players here. Some Israeli regs have had big successes in tournaments recently, both online and live.”

He concluded by expressing hope that the game will move fully above board sometime soon: “There are some legal processes needed to fight for the game to become legit here, so there is some optimism from players.”

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