In a March installment of the PokerStars Sunday Million, a five-way chop occurred. The final five players in the weekly $215 buy-in tournament devised a deal that saw each person walk away with at least $141,000. Taking the fifth spot in the Sunday Major was Marco valek Lang (pictured), who calls Montreal, Canada home. PocketFives.com caught up with Lang to learn how the massive deal went down.

Lang was the shortest stack at the five-handed final table at the time the chop discussions were going on and told us, “The stacks were getting shallow and the other players were interested at looking at the numbers, so we did. From my perspective, I was the shortest stack and had the big stack on my left. He was using it and playing aggressively, so I wasn’t in the best spot.”

He added that the deal awarded him third place money, as fifth place was only scheduled to make $82,000: “I was getting approximately third place money plus a chance to win $30,000 more, so I thought it was a good chance for me to reduce variance and guarantee a big payday. I think I would be more inclined to gamble it up in the future, but I’m happy with my decision now.”

Lang got his start on Pacific Poker seven years ago. He reloaded twice after a rocky beginning, but it’s been uphill from there. He explained his transition from there: “I moved to heads-up sit and gos and played a bit on Pacific and UB.com. I also played some tournaments and cash games over the years up to $5/$10 No Limit Hold’em. Last year, I started playing a bit more $2/$4 No Limit Hold’em Rush full ring. I thought the games were great and made quite a bit of money.”

In January, Lang took second in the PokerStars $100 Rebuy for $24,000 and, earlier in the month, landed in fourth in the site’s $45,000 Guarantee. He’s at #74 in the PocketFives.com Sortable Rankings for Canada and #8 in the city of Montreal.

What’s next for the Canadian? “My goal this year was to play every Sunday tournament on all sites,” Lang lauded. “Because I had a lot of success early in the year, and even more now, I’m looking at playing more MTTs in the future. I’m also looking at playing as many hands as possible in cash games to move up. I’m also trying to learn other games like Pot Limit Omaha, 2-7 Triple Draw, Stud, and would like to play more Mixed Games.”

He candidly summed up his plans by saying, “Basically, I’m going to try to grind everything.”

Meanwhile, his friends and family are largely supportive of his poker endeavors. Lang acknowledged, “My grandma is still afraid I’m going to lose it all and will never see a dime. My friends get it, though. I guess some people will never trust it. The only way is to tell them the money is in your bank account.”

When asked whether jumping from cash games to heads-up sit and gos and back again proved difficult in any way, Lang answered, “Not really, especially from heads-up sit and gos to cash games. I think you have to adjust quite a bit and learn to play better deep-stack poker from all positions. But, if you put some effort into it and play a lot, it’s not that hard. It’s the same thing when you play tournaments versus cash games: you have to adjust, learn to play better with shallow stacks, get better at push/fold, etc.”

Here’s how the final table of the PokerStars Sunday Million shook out on that fateful day. Remember, the payouts reflect a five-way deal:

1. klorinho1 – $172,401
2. Graftekkel – $201,941
3. Cardinal2003 – $164,631
4. timmybwee – $145,402
5. davianvalek – $141,927 (valek)
6. PompYouUp – $62,112 (pompyouup)
7. KUBIBR – $41,408
8. fkasbergen – $20,704
9. Deam0n18 – $13,044

Visit PokerStars for more information and to sign up for this week’s edition.