At 31 years old, Shawn ‘buck21″ Buchanan is the world’s first Triple COOP winner. A couple of years ago, PokerStars started looking at all its major tournament series (WCOOP, SCOOP, and TCOOP) and discovered there was no one who had won a title in all three. There were, however, several players who had titles in a couple of the series. Buchanan was among them.
Buchanan won his first title in 2007 in the World Championship of Online Poker after beating out more than 1,000 people for a title worth nearly $100,000. A couple of years ago, he picked up the first of his two Spring Championship of Online Poker watches. He would go on to win another in 2013.
That’s a long way of saying, Buchanan knows he’s been around for a while
“I am like a grandpa now in the poker world!” he said today.
Last night, poker’s first Triple COOP winner made good on his image by taking down an old game in the Turbo Championship of Online Poker, Event #33’s Razz event.
It made him the first person to ever win a title in all three championship series. What’s more, it qualifies him to win a PokerStars Grand Slam. All he needs to do for that is win a Sunday Million.
Today, Buchanan took a little time to answer a few questions about his achevement.
PokerStars Blog: What, if anything, does it mean to you to be the first to achieve a Triple COOP?
Buchanan: Being the first to achieve the triple crown of COOP feels great. Online poker has a massive player pool and lots of great players, so this is quite the achievement. It is funny because I was not even thinking about it while I was playing and then saw on Twitter after I was the first to make it and was quite excited.
PokerStars Blog: What’s been going on in your life over the past few years?
Buchanan: The past few years I have been playing a lot of poker as usual, both online and around the world playing MTTs. I have balanced my life out a bit more recently, having a girlfriend now. She gets me out to see a lot more stuff and do more things when I travel to tournaments. For years I would go to these beautiful destinations for tournaments and not see much other than the poker tables and casino, so its a nice change.
I had three pretty awesome tournament years in a row and last year was not great, but I feel great about my game although I do not put in the same amount of crazy hours like I used to. Other than poker, basically just trying to enjoy life, spend time with family and friends, travel and see the world, and now recently decided to put in some work on fitness. So I am hoping to be a lot more fit come WSOP 2014, and will be ready to make a splash!
PokerStars Blog: You mentioned on Twitter that you’ve been running hot in Razz.
Buchanan: Razz seems to be my run-good game. I believe I final tabled my last four or five Razz events and won two of them. I have some good survival skills and feel for Razz tournament poker, which may sound funny! I have also ran well in them obviously. In limit games your stack can change so fast, so you can never give up or panic,
I believe on the bubble in this one I had like 10 000 chips and it was probably 3000/6000 or something silly. It really just takes a little luck and a small rush when the limits are so big. You have to give yourself a chance to get lucky by saving any bets when you can. I was very fortunate to win this one. At one point three-handed my opponent said “GG” on 4th street because I was far behind, but he caught super bad and I caught good the last three streets. It was quite funny.
PokerStars Blog: What do you want people to know about you that they don’t already know?
Buchanan: Something people should know about me is that I actually did attend college! For almost a full week! I decided it was not for me. Mom, if you are reading this: do not worry It was a responsible decision at the time. My bankroll was 600 bucks at least!
Also, shout out to Greg Mueller (FBT), the king of saving a bet in all limit tournies and never surrendering, I learned a lot from his limit tournament play. Good luck to everyone the rest of TCOOP and see you at the tables!
Brad Willis is the PokerStars Head of Blogging
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