On the seventh day of January, Dan onel4playOnel (pictured) captured a PocketFives Triple Crown. It was the first time he has won the award and his tournament wins came on PokerStars.fr, Full Tilt, and PokerStars, totaling 550 PLB Points. He lodged the 12th Triple Crown for his home country of Romania.

“I rate the Triple Crown as my biggest achievement so far poker-related, so I was very enthusiastic when I realized I managed to earn it,” Onel told PocketFives in an exclusive interview. “It feels like all of the hard work I have put in the last year has started to pay off.”

Specifically, Onel won the Monday Night on PokerStars.fr, Full Tilt $10,000 Guarantee, and PokerStars Big $8.80. He has been on a tear since, perhaps feeding off that momentum, as he has won the 888 Poker Breeze, final tabled the 888 Mega Deep, finished second in the PokerStars Hotter $11, and was the runner-up in the Big $8.80.

He said the toughest leg of his Triple Crown was on PokerStars.fr. As he put it, “On the last three tables, I saw only about three fish. The rest of them were quite good regs, so I had to choose my spots with more care than the Big $8.80, for example.”

He is closing in on $300,000 in tracked online poker scores and, therefore, told us that his goal for 2015 is to improve his game as much as he can. He also plans to bump up the stakes he’s playing, although where he’ll end up is anyone’s guess. He added, “I would love to make time for a bit of live poker, but we’ll see. One of the things I’ve always liked about poker is that you never know what’s next.”

Onel started his ascent when he was in high school playing in home games, but only started taking poker seriously two years ago. He explained the epiphany: “I realized this was what I wanted to do in life. I’ve always been a competitive person, so the fact that I could actually outthink an opponent and outplay him was the intriguing part of poker that got me. Money also was a big draw for me.”

Before playing poker, Onel was enrolled in university, but admitted, “It wasn’t for me.” You can now find him at #359 worldwide in the PocketFives Rankings, 19 spots off his all-time high, and he is the eighth-ranked player in Romania(pictured). He is one of five PocketFivers with PLB scores from the Romanian county of Olt.

Away from poker, Onel enjoys table tennis (who doesn’t) and also bowls, watches movies, and has recently taken up snowboarding. In the background is what appears to be mixed views of his profession in Romania. “It depends who you’re asking,” Onel said of how poker is viewed. “If you ask a 50-year-old person, they will see it as a bad habit and something very evil. If you ask the newer generation, depending on their winnings, they will respond either that it has changed their life or that online poker is rigged.”

PocketFives has handed out a dozen Triple Crowns in 2015. The award requires a person to win three $10,000 prize pool tournaments across three sites tracked for the Rankings within a seven-day period. Each tournament needs to have at least 100 entrants. Visit our Triple Crown Wall of Champions to learn how to get your own!

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