Physics Grad Student’s Last-Minute Global Poker GOAT Glory

Last-minute preparation doesn’t always work out well, but for Roccoa3 it turned out perfectly, the New Jersey-native physics student scooping the Global Poker Tournament of Champions and a $5000 live tournament package…

The GOAT series had already crowned numerous champions across several weeks by the time Florida-resident Roccoa3 found enough of a gap in his busy graduate schedule to make a run at the championship events.

Winning the SC$4,500 Guaranteed Main Event was a mixed blessing, however; an unexpected spot in the series finale Tournament of Champions, but just hours to prepare.

As Roccoa3 explained:

“I was talking to a friend about how I wasn’t able to play in the tournament until the last second, but I was able to work out my schedule.”

That would prove to be his best off-the-table decision of the summer, the chance to turn around a difficult few months of poker, as he revealed.

“It was pretty crazy, for the summer I’d been focusing on poker more seriously and I got unlucky in the beginning and I was gradually building back up towards breakeven for the summer and I figured I was going to have to grind it out in the last couple of sessions before school started back up again."

By the time he sat down to battle it out for Tournament of Champions glory, his Main Event win had already put him in the poker black.

“When I hit the Main Event tournament to qualify, I was so excited because it brought me above and beyond profitable for the summer,” said Roccoa3, adding, “and that was a great feeling of achievement. It was like a dream come true.”

That dream was doubled as he went on to take down a second title, this one worth $5000 – a package that will see him fly the Global Poker colours at a live tournament of his choice.

It was far from an easy run to the trophy win, though, Roccoa3 recalling:

“Later on in the tournament, I realized, ‘These are the top of the top’. I make notes on players and when I got to the final table everyone had positive notes, so I knew I really had to step my game up.”

It's the culmination of two years of Global Poker play for the young grad student, the GOAT Championship series a nice – and lucrative - change of pace from the Jackpot Sit’n’Go tournaments he enjoys.

A recent addition to the site, Roccoa3 now plans to mix them in with some smaller buy-in tournaments – building a poker schedule around his busy studies.

We’ll be back with a report on how our GOAT hero gets on in the live pokersphere, but in the meantime the Global Poker player focus is on the recently-announced satellites to the CPPT.

The Card Player Poker Tour will be welcoming Global Poker sattie winners to their first stop in Los Angeles, and if you want to join them then check out Global Poker for full details of the schedule of events.