Cory Waaland is originally from Long Island, NY but has lived most of his life in the Carolinas, the last 8 being in Greenville, NC (home of East Carolina University). He began playing poker with friends as a senior in high school where his hate for losing turned in to an obsession for getting better. He started to play every day at local bar tournaments and/or friends houses and eventually started dealing house games for the next 3 years while in college, which is where he really started to hone his poker instinct and that “6th sense” at the table .
In 2009, on his first trip to Las Vegas he blew a big chip lead 3 handed in a Venetian Deep Stack (almost 900 people) to bust 3rd for 19k. At that point he realized that he needed to start taking poker more seriously. For the next year and a half he would take frequent trips to Atlantic City on the weekends to play cash games and tournaments. Post Black Friday Cory began playing more online under the screen name “pokherNnut312” on the Merge network and went on to rack up 100k in cashes over the next 6 months.
After a bad summer in Las Vegas, he moved in with good friend John Gonzalez, “Drewpeacoq8”, to start grinding again. He deposited $60 bucks on Carbon poker on his new screen name “MJ23STYLEz.” He grinded small stakes for about 2 months and was able to get a check in time to go play the WSOP Circuit events at Caesars, AC. That’s when it all began. He would go on to win Event #1 for $32,000 and 6 days later he got 3rd in Event #6 for another $10k (so close to ring #2!) Exactly one month later he finish 3rd in the WSOPC Foxwoods Main Event for $89k and also made a deep run in the Harrah’s Chester Main a few weeks later, but lost HUGE pot to bust 20th for just over $5k.
After being on the road for almost 3 months straight he went back to NC and on his first Sunday back online grinding worked his say through almost 1,500 people to win the Poker Maximus V Main Event for almost $54k!! Shortly after that he got a call from TPE and now is making videos for the very site that he used to watch them on! Cory considers himself beyond blessed to be able to do what he loves for a living and thanks God everyday for it. Just like MJ, he plans to never stop improving. Watch out poker world here he comes!