Player focus: t soprano

Brock Parker – aka “t soprano” or “Maria Nuccia” - has mainly earned his reputation as one of the best online players in the world through winning little but often. While he has achieved one major triumph – the UltimateBet $500 No Limit Hold’em, which earned him $211,500 – he spends most of his time grinding out smaller wins with astonishing regularity.

Parker has yet to manage any single win of more than $13,000 in a tournament in 2007 so far – and yet he’s pulled down more than $200,000 in total playing on UltimateBet and PokerStars alone. Aside from that single six-figure win on UltimateBet, which came in October 2006, Parker could be described as something of a “steady Eddie” of poker - he accumulates a little, often.

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Little is a relative term, of course – some of t_soprano’s 'little' triumphs would secure bragging rights for months for lots of online players. Since the start of 2006 he’s collected $10,000 or more on 13 separate occasions on UltimateBet and PokerStars, and has cashed literally hundreds of times.

Parker is 23 and hails from Silver Springs, Maryland. He got into poker via the card strategy game "Magic: The Gathering", which was also played to a high level by fellow poker converts ZeeJustin, Gobboboy and ActionJeff, among others. As he explained in an interview with The Washington Post: "Poker got big in my circle of friends was I was 18 when the card shark movie ‘Rounders’ came out. A year later, I realised there was real money to be made.

"When I started I’d go online and consistently cash out $5,000 every 10 days or so. It would be a series of smaller wins, not just one big win… I was going to the University of Maryland but I stopped after a year because I wasn’t doing too well. I was playing too much poker."

Parker now also plays major offline tournaments: he’s competed in Aruba, Bermuda and played the WSOP in Las Vegas last year. For the time being, however, he remains on online poker legend. He plays under the name "t soprano" on PokerStars, "Maria Nuccia" on UltimateBet, "PogFanatic" on PartyPoker and "BrisCoJr" on Bodog.com. Watch out for him when you're at the table.

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