With more than $7.9 million in cashes across a career spanning more than a decade, Charlie “JIZOINT” Combes is undoubtedly one of the UK’s most successful online players.
A couple of years ago Combes opted to take a break from poker in order to travel the world with his fiancée, Nicola. By his own admission, the game had passed him by upon his return, and things didn’t get any easier when the couple had twin babies seven months ago.
Now Combes is balancing fatherhood with working hard to get back to the top of his game. The results are speaking for themselves, as two weeks ago he chopped the Sunday Million for $83,813.
In a rare break from changing nappies, we were able to catch up with Combes. Check out that conversation below.
PokerStars Blog: When you first started playing, could you have imagined you’d still be at it some 13 years later?
Charlie “JIZOINT” Combes: “No, and I wouldn’t have chosen the name JIZOINT if I knew I was going to be a professional!”
PSB: Congratulations on the Sunday Million chop. Was this the first time you’d final tabled it?
Combes: “I’ve final tabled it twice before. I think it was in my first or second year when I was really bad at poker, and then I never got anywhere close.”
PSB: You’ve had great results in just about all the big online tournaments (Combes has three SCOOP titles and a Super Tuesday title, to name a couple). It must be nice to tick the Milly off the list?
Combes: “It was really nice, and the field is double the size than it used to be now the buy-in is $109. So that feels even better when you beat 10,000 people.”
PSB: How do you feel about the buy-in change?
Combes: “It’s much softer. It was quite soft before for a $215, but it’s definitely much softer now. You can noticeably feel a difference, even deep in it. I think there were only two or three players who seemed to know what they were doing properly.”
Grinding by Lake Atitlán in Guatemala
PSB: Were there any key hands that you remember en route to the chop?
Combes: “There was one hand that I sent to my backer on BOOM (check out that hand here). That was a massive bluff three-handed.”
PSB: What does your weekly schedule look like these days?
Combes: “On a Sunday I start at roughly 4pm. Before I was with my backer I was playing almost everything on my own money. Me and Nicola went travelling around the world for a year and my previous backer left me just before, so when I came back I started playing on my own money.
“I think I’d fallen behind the game a fair bit because I took a year off and I got lazy when I got back. I just started to lose lots of my own money. So I found a backer again who has made me do some study which brought my game back to a good level, I hope. His name is Michael Copley from Poker Winners. He’s really helped point me in the right direction in the last few months along with his stable analyst.
“He requires me to play four nights a week. He requires a certain volume a month, but he’s quite lenient about it all. To be honest, when I’m not playing I’m changing nappies.”
PSB: Did you and Nicola celebrate the score?
Combes: “Yeah, we went out for dinner the next night with the kids, but we had to leave early because they were screaming.”
PSB: What drives you at the moment?
Combes: “At the moment I’m working with a coach. I used to be really highly ranked in the world on PocketFives.com, and when I went away for a year I fell behind the game. I wasn’t using a HUD (heads-up display), and I wasn’t familiar with pioSOLVER, and all this stuff that all the whizz kids are using now. So I’m just getting familiar with all of this at the moment, and I’m studying to get to the top of my game again.
“My main aim is just to move up the rankings. I don’t have a specific tournament I want to win, I just want to show a consistent profit.”
Combes is currently ranked 12th in the UK, according to PocketFives.com
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