If you tuned into the World Series of Poker Main Event broadcast on Sunday, you were mostly viewing a feature table that had Nick Schulman and Loni Harwood as the prominent players. If you stuck around to watch, you likely noticed the player in Seat 2, well-built with a neatly trimmed beard and strong table presence. That’s Ryan Pochedly.

Living in Pennsylvania, Pochedly got his start in poker “like everybody else.” He started playing in college, deposited some money with an online poker site, and never looked back. Today, poker is Pochedly’s profession and he’s looking forward to regulated online poker coming to his home state.

“I started playing online,” Pochedly said. “I put like $30 on Pacific Poker and grinded it up from there.”

Pochedly performed well under the bright lights and television cameras, picking up chips and confidently building his stack. It was evident that he might’ve done this before.

“I was on a live stream once when I final tabled a turbo event at the World Series a few years ago, but this was the first time for me being on live television,” Pochedly told PocketFives. “It was really cool and I enjoyed it.”

Looking up Pochedly’s records, he had a deep WSOP Main Event finish in 2012, taking 182nd for $44,655. Scanning Pochedly’s list of results a little more reveals that he’s had 14 prior WSOP cashes, including the 2012 WSOP Main Event run and a WSOP final table in 2016 when he placed eighth in a $1,000 turbo event.

“It definitely helps because I’m not as nervous as I would have been years ago,” Pochedly said of how his prior WSOP experience has been helping him this year. “The first time I had a deep WSOP Main Event run, I had trouble sleeping and stuff like that. So far, so good. I’m sleeping like a baby, and I’m not tired or anything.”

Pochedly’s career-best score is $101,105 from 2015 at Parx Casino in Bensalem, Pennsylvania. In the Big Stax XI $1,600 event, Pochedly topped the field of 259 entries for the victory. The following year, he won another tournament at Part. This time it was the Big Stax XIX $340 tournament for $78,244. In that one, Pochedly topped a much larger field of 1,722 entries. In May 2019, just before the World Series of Poker, Pochedly finished fifth for $50,797 in the WPTDeepStacks Big Stax XXIX $340 event.

All of those results are live tournament scores, but Pochedly is as excited as anyone about the thought of PA online poker opening up soon. When he was asked about how he felt about it, a smile came across his face before he gave his answer.

“I’m probably one of the most excited guys about [online poker returning to Pennsylvania],” Pochedly said. “I used to play a lot online, and I’m looking forward to playing cash and then tournaments on Sundays and pretty much every day.”

Pochedly finished Day 2c of the 2019 WSOP Main Event with 182,000 in chips and will be back in action on Monday at 12 p.m. PT.