Miki relishes his home casino victory

Congratulations on winning the PPT Madrid, how does it feel to have won the event in your local casino?
It was a great tournament with a good structure and it feels great to win. I hit some cards obviously and everything seemed to go my way. This is my local casino; I come here all the time so while obviously it’s great to win anything, anywhere, it’s even better to win at home!

You were one of the big names coming into this tournament; did you find players were targeting you as a result? Or did your reputation make things easier?
It didn’t really have too much effect to be honest. I’m known in here but there plenty of people playing who were not from Spain, so they didn’t know me.

What were the highlights of the competition for you? Were there any hands that stood out that you’ll remember?
I went all-in pre-flop with JJ in one hand and went up against AK, and I made quads to win a huge pot. That was probably the biggest I won, but also won with AQ vs AK for half my stack, but after that I tended to win small pots, right through the final table until I was heads-up.

So you came to the final table with a big stack, how did you feel it went from there?
I started as chip leader but I lost a couple of pots and Ricardo built his stack up to about a million points. I couldn’t really play until we got down to four players and it was then I started being more aggressive, got a big stack and eventually the win.

But you always looked comfortable; did you ever have to go all-in?
No actually I was only all-in for all my chips in one hand during the whole tournament, so that’s great for any player. I was often facing other people’s all-ins but I never had all my chips at risk, which is just about perfect poker.

Once you reached the heads-up with Ricardo Calleja, you decided to split the money. Why was that?
Yeah we were playing for €15,000 and we had even stacks and it’s a bit of a lottery for that money. If we hadn’t made a deal, we could have played heads-up for another four hours. It’s been a fantastic experience so I was happy to split the money and be named PPT Madrid champion!