"You Never Expect to Win a Tournament with 34,000 Entrants"
At the tail end of January, Deric Lee (pictured), known on PocketFives as omgitsball, won the PokerStars Sunday Stormafter a three-way deal and took home $25,000. As he fittingly put it, “I am happy. It’s surreal. You never expect to win a tournament with 34,000 entrants.” He took home the largest amount given out and was the lone PocketFiver to make the final table.
He didn’t give the Sunday Storm too much attention initially that day, as the TCOOP was also ongoing along with the regular Sunday events. Lee said that the Storm, however, began to take precedence as the day wore on: “Slowly, I busted my other tables one by one and ended up one-tabling it.”
Lee held the shortest stack when talk of a deal came up three-handed. “I said I didn’t mind looking at the numbers since I was the shortest at that point, but the other two seemed like recreational players, so I asked for a bit more than ICM, which they agreed to after debating for a while.” The other two choppers each took home around $20,000 and the trio played on for $6,000.
“I’m still happy with the chop,” Lee said a few days after the fact. “I still think I had an edge over both of them, but being the shortest stack, I didn’t mind locking up some money and reducing variance a bit. I got more than ICM and it’s not like you’ll make it to the final table of the Sunday Storm usually anyway.”
If you’re not familiar with it, the Storm has an $11 buy-in. Lee plays a wide variety of games, from micro-stakes all the way up to $55 MTTs, so the large-field tournament is right in his wheelhouse.
He occasionally takes shots during larger tournament series and pointed out, “I’ll be the first to admit I’m not good enough for the daily high-stakes schedule yet, so I’m content with playing the low levels for now. As for the money, I’m still thinking whether it will go to padding my bankroll or whether I should save it and get into being staked so I don’t need to worry about swings and bankroll problems. He plays poker full-time and hopes to branch out into live tournaments soon. He’s at $143,000 in tracked online MTT scores and has been a member of PocketFives since 2012, so it’s safe to say he’s still on the up-and-up.
Lee calls Singapore (pictured) home and is one of 107 PocketFivers with PLB scores from that country. “There are several full-time poker players here,” Lee said of poker in the Asian nation. “I know a few of them and a lot of recreational players also, but the game definitely does not sit well with our government, as they just passed a law against online gaming. I have no idea when it will be enforced, though, but I’m crossing my fingers.”
The bill in question, the Remote Gambling Act, was passed last October and was scheduled to go into effect on February 2.
Lee closed by wanting to give a shout out to his girlfriend michellemx, “who supported me during my time playing and was always by my side encouraging me throughout my downswing. I also want to recognize my friend kamarvin3, who helps a lot with my game, and one of the top players in Singapore, durrden, who gave me a lot of tips on poker. I’d also like to thank my ex-coach, ihaterivers, who taught me a lot of things.”
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