Earlier this month, two separate PocketFives Opens were held to celebrate our online poker community, one on 888 Pokerfor non-U.S. players and one on HogWild Pokerfor U.S. players. Taking down the former was Suffolk’s Andy McKenna, better known as amck1888 here on PocketFives. The tournament drew 235 players and McKenna banked $1,700 for first place, which included $1,100 added by 888.

“I feel pretty good,” McKenna told PocketFives in an interview a few weeks after the fact. “It ended a month-long bad run.” The top 30 on the leaderboard were paid and PocketFives Elite member wackyJaxon, who won the PocketFives Open in February 2012, finished in fourth place, nearly becoming our first ever two-time winner.

“I saw the added money and thought it was a good value, and the competition was strong,” McKenna commented when asked why he signed up to play in the PocketFives Open. He added that he started the tournament rather slowly, but “in the middle part of it, my trips seemed to hit and by the time I made the final table, I was confident I would win. I was familiar with a few of the other players, which helped. When I got head-to-head, I just wore him down until he got impatient.”

His heads-up opponent was Quebec’s chyy, whose second place finish was worth $964. His largest tracked cash is an $18,000 score on PokerStars in October of last year.

McKenna has a rather interesting poker tale. He is a caretaker for the jockey clubhouse in Newmarket, England and used to play a three-card game in pubs. Then, in 2006, he started playing Texas Hold’em. “I think I saw an advertisement on TV about online poker,” McKenna recalled, “and I found PocketFives when I Googled an opponent’s name to get information on him. He was a member of PocketFives.”

McKenna added, “PocketFives has helped me by having information on opponents, and the money from the Open has given me more buy-ins.” The PocketFives Open is the largest cash we’ve tracked for the England poker community member. He also has wins in the 888 Poker $3,000 Guaranteed Deep Stack and $5,000 Guaranteed Deep Stack, just to name a few.

We are always looking for suggestions for future installments of the PocketFives Open, so McKenna joked that previous winners should get triple starting stacks. He then seriously told us, “Maybe a deep stack and 15-minute blinds.” We’ll take that into consideration.

This month’s tournaments on 888 Poker and HogWild Poker crowned the 27th and 28th winners of the PocketFives Open. Our first ever champion of the Open was gator93, who took it down back in March 2005. Visit the PocketFives Open Wall of Champions to see who else has won.

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