Euro Poker: Party Poker 'Grind' Promo Pays Out Big

Twenty-two-year-old James McManus from Dublin, Ireland, was the big winner of PartyPoker.com's The Grind promotion, winning a Mini Cooper S convertible and a Nintendo Wii in the prize draw when he came sixth at the final table of a Grindroll. This came less than two months after he won $52,000 on the PartyPoker.com bad-beat jackpot.

McManus recently finished studying math at college and intends to work in the finance industry or as a teacher, but got a massive boost after winning the equivalent of nearly $100,000 in two months.

"It has been a good couple of months," said McManus, with great understatement. "I didn't have many debts, but I've paid off all that I did have. I intend to use some of the money to build a bankroll for online cash games. I've thought about the tournament circuit a bit, but I would need a bigger bankroll and I'm happy where I am now.

"I opted to take $40,000 rather than the car," he said. "A Mini Cooper S convertible would be great, but I don't really have the need for it at the moment. I'm looking forward to getting my Wii though. I also won the bad-beat jackpot two months ago. I had pocket queens and flopped quads, my opponent had pocket nines and ended up with quad nines. He got $104,000 and I got $52,000 and won the hand. That was brilliant, but to win all of this in such a short period of time is fantastic."

McManus acknowledged that his math skills can come in handy in his play but that he had just been on a very, very good run. "It has been going great recently. I normally play $2-$4 or $3-$6 no-limit cash games and the odd tournament. I intend to stick to the same stakes, for the time being, and build on what I have."

The Grind featured $100,000 worth of Grindrolls and ran until Sept. 9. To qualify for Grindrolls, users had to earn at least 25 PartyPoints per day over a three-day period. Once this was achieved, they then qualified for the $2,000 Grindroll. The more PartyPoints a player earned in a day, the bigger Grindroll they were entered for. McManus managed to "grind" for five days in each of the two weeks of the promotion and was automatically entered into the prize draw to win the Mini Cooper S. Other prizes won in Grindrolls included 80 Nintendo Wii's and 120 80-GB video iPods.

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