Why Not Play With Real Money Since I am Playing Anyway?
At some point, many of us have stopped playing poker for play chips and started competing for real cash. For Paris parisdedes Dedes (pictured), his poker journey began by battling for free on a Facebook app. He told PocketFives in an exclusive interview, “When I started playing on Facebook, I ended up playing for three or four days and thought, ‘Why not play with real money since I am playing anyway?'” And so his career was born.
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Last month, Dedes was part of a four-way chop of the weekly PokerStars Sunday 500 and reeled in $50,000. There were 853 registrants and Dedes officially departed in fourth place. He explained, “It was a relief after some really poor months. It was a long, long day and the tournament got really shallow. Generally, when the tournament gets to 20 or 30 big blinds for each person, I prefer to make a deal because it’s really easy to bust losing a flip or something.”
In the end, an ICM deal occurred. One of his chopping buddies was none other than longtime PocketFives member brainwash (pictured), who cashed out in third place for the same $50,000. We asked Dedes for a quick evaluation of brainwash’s play: “brainwash had the chip lead from the beginning and was opening a ton of hands, but I was lucky to have him on my direct right. He was probably my main concern to make the deal because four-handed, it would be tough not to put it in really marginally the way he was playing.”
For Dedes and much of the PocketFives community, all eyes are now focused on SCOOP, which takes place on PokerStars starting next Sunday and guarantees $40 million. 2012 was Dedes’ first foray into SCOOP and he played the “vast majority of tournaments. I hope this year I’ll manage to hit a good score in SCOOP. It’s probably the best time to play on PokerStars.”
His online tournament career includes a final table in the Warm-Up in 2010 for $78,000 and a victory in the PokerStars $162 Sunday Six-Max for $26,000 in February of this year. The Greek player has more than $1.3 million in tracked scores in his profile. In 2012, he final tabled a Two-Day Event during the PokerStars.fr SCOOP series and walked away with $27,000. He also has multiple wins in the PokerStars $100 Rebuy and Big $109, just to name a few.
Despite his tournament success, he sometimes ventures into heads-up cash games, which he evaluated as follows: “I really like the dynamic of heads-up cash games. A friend of mine used to play a lot of heads-up and used to observe a lot and so I got into it. It’s probably the most skillful type of Texas Hold’em.”
Dedes is definitely competitive and told us that his drive is what has separated him from the pack over the years: “I am really competitive and so love to battle. That and the adrenaline are why I stuck with poker.”
Dedes can be found at #103 worldwide in the PocketFives Online Poker Rankingsand he is top dog in his hometown of Athens, Greece. He has over 1,650 tracked cashes in his PocketFives profile and joined our community 19 months ago. See what else is brewing in our Greece poker community.
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