"What Doesn't Kill Us Makes Us Stronger"

Dan · April 26, 2015

Perhaps Kelly Clarkson (pictured) put it best: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Or maybe it was actually Friedrich Nietzsche. Or maybe it was Shak Kaz, who is known on PocketFives as HAHALIVEPROS. Either way, Kaz won the PokerStars Sunday Million a couple of weeks ago after a heads-up chop and banked a healthy $183,000.

“It was a long time coming,” Kaz told PocketFives after the fact. “I have had a lot of close calls in Sunday Majors. I’m not sure if I can top it, but SCOOP is coming up and I can’t wait to have the bankroll for the $7.50 Rebuy Turbo!”

He doubled up on the third hand of the Sunday Million, certainly getting off to a prosperous start, and then donated his chips to a very aggressive player who ended up giving them right back after 4bet shoving K-5 into Kaz’s J-J. The board ran out K-J-5-K-J and he was back in business in dramatic fashion with quads against a boat.

Hours later, Kaz made the final table of the 6,469-player tournament. He said of the last nine, “There were a lot of spots to leverage ICM. I ran very well situationally at the final two tables, holding with J-J against 9-9 and A-A against J-J. I got aces four times from 18 to 10 people left, which was great because I have a spazzy image usually, so aces are cool.”

He started a stable with two friends, so the $183,000 will be a “nice safety net” for it. He doesn’t plan on moving up in stakes and joked, “I don’t really like drugs, so I can’t imagine anything to use the money on. I’m open to suggestions.”

In case you’re wondering where his HAHALIVEPROS moniker comes from, it stems from his views on wannabe live players. He explained, “A lot of people who consider themselves live pros say some stupid stuff and my only reaction is ‘Ha-ha live pros’ with a headshake.”

Kaz has accumulated over $400,000 in winnings on PokerStars under the user name Njaguar, which he said was derived from the name of an admin of a forum he spent too much time on. Kaz also made too many poor decisions on said forum, leaving him to tell us, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” Stand a little taller.

He got started in poker playing on a camping trip. When he was 17, he jumped into online poker with no bankroll management and binked a few tournaments to stay afloat. He said, “I didn’t know how to cash out as a 17-year-old, so I just sat at $3/$6 PLO with five buy-ins heads-up and ran hella hot. I got an okay roll and then my account got locked for underage play because a kid from my high school reported me one month before my 18th birthday. I deserved it for being a cocky high school senior, though.”

He’s now 20 years old, so heading to Las Vegas for next month’s World Series of Poker is out of the question. “I’ll definitely give Vegas a go once or twice, but I’m not into drinking or partying, so I’m not sure if I’ll like it that much,” he told us. “I have a ticket to an LAPT that I won trying to prove a point to a friend that $11 Rebuy satellites are stupid soft, so I will play that.”

Kaz juggles poker with school. He’s double-majoring law and finance at the University of Calgary and, although those might sound like rough subjects, he said both are “fairly easy streams.” Who knew? He plays poker a couple times per week now, mainly on the weekends and Wednesdays with an occasional Monday thrown in for fun.

He closed by wanting to send shout outs to SwoopAE, jstclkdabtn, OneTime1Time, 88XIN88, OnTheMac, StatusUp(pictured), jnfpoker, DoubleS00ted, and oOwl“for all of their hand reviews. I also want to send a shout out to PokerStaples‘ stream for showing me that poker isn’t dead and that bad regs can win the Big $109. Bang-bang, cross-book anytime mate.”