One member of the online poker community who has torn the live poker world apart is Yevgeniy Jovial GentTimoshenko. In April, Timoshenko emerged victorious in the World Poker Tour (WPT) Championship at the Bellagio for $2.1 million. He defeated Ran Azor heads-up in a final table that also featured Bertrand ElkYGrospellier, Christian charderHarder, Shannon ShannonShorrShorr, and Scotty Nguyen. His follow-up performance was besting a field of 2,144 players in the Main Event of the PokerStarsWorld Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP). The very next day, he won the $1K Monday on Full Tilt Poker for another $75,000.

Timoshenko currently sits at 19th on the PocketFives.com Online Poker Rankings on the strength of the second best PLB score worldwide. We caught up with Timoshenko in London, where he grabbed 25th place in the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Europe Main Event for £25,000, lunch money by his standards.
PocketFives.com: 2009 has seen you take down the WPT Championship and the WCOOP Main Event for nearly $4 million total. Is it surreal at this point?

Timoshenko: It’s surreal and I really feel blessed.

PocketFives.com: What do you attribute your success to?

Timoshenko: I mainly attribute it to being really confident and playing really well this year. My WPT win gave me a lot of confidence and motivated me to play more poker and try to have a really big year.

PocketFives.com: Did your experience in major live tournaments like the WPT Championship (final table pictured at right) help you battle through a two day contest like the WCOOP Main Event and ultimately prevail?

Timoshenko: Yes. Major live tournaments are often better structured and always take much longer than online tournaments. You definitely need a lot of patience and stamina to win something like the WCOOP Main Event and playing a lot of live tournaments has helped me with that.

PocketFives.com: You reached Day 4 of the 2009 WSOP Europe Main Event and cashed for £25,000. Talk about your final day of play.

Timoshenko: Being shut out of the WSOP Main Event in Las Vegas, this was my WSOP Main Event this year and with as much momentum as I had going for me, I was super determined and motivated to make it count. I was on a very tough feature table all of Day 1B and only managed to end of the day with 35,000 after having a bad last level. After Day 2, I soared to 192,000 after having a much easier table and catching some cards. On Day 3, I climbed to 660,000 in three levels and was the chip leader at one point.

After that, I had a really bad level where I lost two monster pots and ended with 490,000. After that, I finished out the day to a ghastly two levels at the feature table, where I couldn’t get anything going and just slowly bled down to 285,000. On Day 4, I came prepared after finally sleeping well in London and climbed up to 420,000 after the first level without much happening. I was really in a groove and then I lost two huge pots to the same guy on my immediate right who I was trying to play pots against. That brought me down to 120,000 and, after that, Ah-Kh versus 6-6 all-in for 400,000 ended it for me.

PocketFives.com: We’ve had other players note that you’re not particularly cocky or arrogant at the tables. Is that a fair assessment?

Timoshenko: Yes. I always try to be polite and well mannered at the tables.

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