In mid-November, Vinicius Coutinho (pictured), known on PocketFives as VinnyCout, outlasted a field of 32,447 entrants to win the PokerStars Sunday Storm. His reward was $25,000, or 2,400 times his buy-in, and he edged out fellow PocketFiver jjshooter heads-up after a two-way chop.

“I’m very happy,” Coutinho told us. “It’s a tourney that any regular dreams to win, mostly the low-stakes guys who can’t play the Sunday Million every week. The Storm doesn’t have the best players in its field, but I consider it a big accomplishment based on the huge field. I don’t know any player who doesn’t desire to win it.”

He is quickly approaching $400,000 in career online tournament winnings and said, “As I am a longtime professional player, I completely understand variance and what a bink like this represents. I plan to spend a bit of the money traveling with my wife, but I’ll also re-invest in poker on my bankroll, horses, and shares.”

As we said, jjshooter and Coutinho chopped heads-up, so we asked the latter to walk us through how the deal went down. He explained, “I was in my normal Sunday grind with many tables. After a six-hour session, I was only in the Storm and still in the money. I was thinking, ‘Okay, maybe today can be the day.’ It’s not the kind of tourney that you can have some certainties in, so I wanted to make a plan. My goal at that moment was to get to 100 left, then 50 left, then 18 left. After that, I wanted to win.”

He added, “When we were close to the final table bubble, I won a big pot that gave me total comfort and security to apply my A-game. Things were going well and I didn’t have to take any big risks. Heads-up, we decided to chop. I had a bit fewer chips, but with a few hands and a run of cards, I finally won. At that moment, I was not happy only with the money. I really wanted to be first.”

Coutinho has been playing poker full-time since 2012. He started by playing the least expensive sit and gos around and is still working to climb up to higher stakes. He explained, “In poker, work never ends. Every day there’s a guy working harder than you.” He had been working in commerce and industry for 15 years prior to playing poker. His career path also included stops in accounting and a job at a bank.

Outside of poker, Coutinho said he’s a “simple guy” who likes sports, traveling, and food. He told us, “For a few years, I moved to some nice places in Brazil to try to enjoy this great country. That’s what I love about my job: I can work in any place at any time. I can play poker not only here, but also around the world.”

Coutinho is the 212th-ranked player in Brazil out of the almost 2,200 with PLB scores. Worldwide in the PocketFives Rankings, he can be found at #1,603.

He closed by telling us, “I’ve met a ton of good people in poker. That has help me improve and allowed me to keep following my goals and dreams. So for everyone who has met me, this result is for you. What can I say? This is only the first step. I’m hungry for more.”

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