On May 10th, Connor blanconegroDrinan finished as the runner-up in the high-stakes edition of Event #23 of the PokerStarsSpring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP), a $1,050 No Limit Hold’em Rebuy, for $183,000. Thirteen days later, he took down the UB.com $200,000 Guaranteed Sunday Major for another $45,000. Needless to say, it’s been a fairly lucrative month of May for Drinan, who hails from the suburbs of Chicago. Now, he has his eyes set on the Las Vegas desert, the site of the annual World Series of Poker.
PocketFives.com: Congratulations on your recent string of final tables. Walk us through the UB.com $200,000 Guaranteed.
Connor Drinan: I don’t really remember the beginning because I was playing about 15 tables. The earliest I remember was starting with 20,000 chips at 500/1,000 blinds. I doubled with pocket aces against pocket fours. Then, I got to 100,000, but hit a two-outer with two tables left after shoving with pocket fives against pocket jacks.
From there, I went on to win two more coin flips, each adding about 100,000 to my stack. So, I was up to about 450,000 and from there just seemed to control the tournament. I was card racking, but playing somewhat tight, and most of the players left were regulars who have played with me before and figured I would just be playing really aggressive with a big stack. I basically got a few hands in convenient spots and busted I think everyone but one person at the final table.
Heads-up against J.D. micardplayer Stearley was a battle. I started off with a 2.2 million to 400,000 lead, had him down to 200,000, and then he won a bunch of all-ins. It went on for a while and at one point, he had the chip lead, but I ended up getting him back down to 600,000 and winning with K-Q against A-X.
PocketFives.com: Will we be seeing you in Las Vegas for the WSOP?
Connor Drinan: I turn 21 in the middle of it, so I’m going out a couple of days before that and starting play on my birthday, which will be the $10,000 Pot Limit Hold’em event. I’m just going to play everything I can in the two weeks I’m able to be there. I’ll play all of the No Limit Hold’em tournaments and maybe a couple of other things. Then, I’m going to fly home for the weekend of the 4th of July to get a nice refresher before the Main Event.
PocketFives.com: How do you think you’ll fare in the $10,000 Pot Limit Hold’em Championship?
Connor Drinan: I’m excited for it. I don’t have much Pot Limit Hold’em tournament experience, but I feel like I’ll be able to adjust to the changes better than the average person playing it. I’ve run pretty badly in live poker so far, so I’m excited to try to do some positive things in the few events I can play.
PocketFives.com: Tell us how you got started in poker.
Connor Drinan: I started playing $5 tournaments with my track team during my freshman year of high school. I later discovered online poker, started playing sit and gos on PartyPoker, and climbed up pretty fast. I was 10-tabling $200 sit and gos on PokerStars when my buddy mman_status told me I would be good at tournaments.
I had some success right away. I had three $20,000+ scores in one week and have been playing mostly MTTs since then. In the past year or so, I’ve also taken up heads-up sit and gos to reduce the variance of my income. Now, I basically only play MTTs on Sundays.