Last week, 888 Pokerhosted the PocketFives Open. We had well over 200 players enter including two 888 sponsored pros: Bruno Politano (pictured) and Sofia Lovgren. The former finished eighth in last year’s World Series of Poker Main Event and said of that experience, “It was the best experience of my life. It was amazing! I wish all professional poker players could live that experience one day in their lives. It’s unreal.”

Politano made almost a million dollars from the WSOP Main Event and said he learned that life is “full of good times. We should take of all of them the best possible way; we need to enjoy all of the good moments.” He has since final tabled a Six-Max WSOP event in Australia.

Let’s get back to the PocketFives Open for a minute. 888 generously added $2,500 in cash to the prize pool. While it certainly didn’t come close to the WSOP Main Event, Politano told us, “The Open was a good experience. There were a lot of players talking with me in the chat, which was a lot of fun.” He busted in fourth place after an ill-fated semi-bluff. Impressively, his 888 partner in crime, Lovgren, also cracked the top 15 and finished 11th.

The Brazil pokercommunity on PocketFives has almost 3,000 registered members, who have combined winnings in excess of $250 million. “I believe poker in Brazil has changed,” Politano commented about the game in his home country. “Everybody now plays poker and tries to find tournaments to play online. Poker has also won a lot of space on media channels like magazines and radio.”

Brazil is #4 in PocketFives’ Country Poker Rankingswith a combined PLB score of its top 20 members of 99,930 points. It owns 12 PocketFives Triple Crowns and its members have logged almost exactly 400,000 cashes over the years. In total, poker seems to be exploding in the South American nation.

Politano got started in poker 12 years ago with his friends from university. While he was coming up in the game, he was concurrently working in the pharmaceutical industry for the US-based company Sanofi.

According to ESPN, his promising poker career took a wrong turn at the 2011 WSOP. After a lackluster run in Las Vegas, “He began concentrating on a company, Couro & Cia, that sells handbags, shoes, and leather accessories. As the business expanded, he opened up a store in the chic downtown area of Sao Paulo. The timing of this store was perfect, as Brazil regulated poker in 2012 and one of the most active poker cities was San Paulo.”

Politano remains about as determined as it gets in the poker industry. Accordingly, his advice for other players is to “study, study, study. Success in poker is in the information.”

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