Last month, a field of nearly 3,000 players turned out for the weekly PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up. The tournament beat its $500,000 guarantee by about 20% and the top 432 finishers made the money. Fourth place and a windfall of $34,000 went to Poland’s OzzyM, who recently received his $250,000 cash badge here on PocketFives.

“Even though it’s by far the biggest result of my career so far, I feel quite calm,” OzzyM told us of his emotions. “There wasn’t as much skill involved in my result as I would have wanted, as for the last few hours of the tournament, I was the short stack and it just came down to pushing in correct spots and getting lucky when needed.” He has been part of the PocketFives community since August of last year.

Push-fold strategy seemed vital for OzzyM down the stretch in the Warm-Up, so we asked about his experience in those situations. He responded, “I did some work off the tables a few months ago. My results in Turbo MTTs were pretty poor and I simply had to improve in that area.”

How can you excel in push-fold situations and Turbo MTT strategy? Get poker software? Shadow other players? Increase your volume? He explained, “I took advantage of better players’ experiences by watching videos and talking with some good Turbo Sit and Go players. Also, I did a lot of work on my own like analyzing ranges and working with equity tools.” He added that while he was comfortable with his short stack play, he “dreamed” of stacking over 30 big blinds in order to exploit his edge at the tables.

The Warm-Up is the largest cash PocketFives has tracked for OzzyM, who peaked at #816 in the PocketFives Rankings in mid-June. What are his plans for the money? “First, I have to send a big chunk of it to my stakers,” OzzyM relayed. “Whatever remains will find a good use in some live tournaments for sure, Eureka Varna being the first of them.”

“I haven’t played live a lot yet,” our interview subject said of his offline game. “I’m still at the beginning of my MTT career and hope to play a couple of $1K events this year and possibly some EPTs next year. From what I’ve played already, my live game is pretty good and all of the knowledge I use online seems to work well live. It’s just a matter of constantly improving my online game, which seems to become better and better every month.”

The Poland pokercommunity member got started in the game after finding it through family and friends. Three years ago, he hopped online and started playing on Full Tilt. Outside of poker, he shared, “I’m a student of Computer Science in Warsaw (pictured), just a half-year from my Bachelor’s degree. Right after I get it, I’ll turn into a full-time poker pro.”

We wanted to touch on the Polish community here on PocketFives, which is nearly 600 players strong and responsible for nearly $40 million in lifetime online MTT earnings. The group has compiled $8.5 million in earnings in the last three months alone and seems poised to continue excelling. He wanted to salute his fellow Polish players, telling us, “Special thanks to all players from Poland with whom I’ve worked in the last year. They’ve all helped me a lot. We’re all improving greatly and it’s not a surprise that we’re fourth in Country Poker Rankings already. Watch out for Poles everybody, we’re coming!“

He closed by saying, “Even though we’re talking after my biggest result, it’s far from my biggest in terms of satisfaction. It’s just a fourth place finish in a medium-sized field tournament and there was a lot of luck in it. I had a couple of smaller results that gave me way more satisfaction than this one and hope to have more opportunities to get big results in the future.”

Visit PokerStarsfor more details on the weekly Sunday Million. If you don’t already have a PokerStars account, you can sign up through PocketFives’ links and make a deposit to get a 100% up to $600 deposit bonus, one free month of PocketFives Training with the sign-up fee waived, and be eligible for an exclusive weekly Sunday Million ticket giveaway. You can sign up for PokerStars by clicking here.

Want the latest poker headlines and interviews? Follow PocketFives on Twitterand Like PocketFives on Facebook. You can also subscribe to our RSS feed.