In 2006, three years after Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker Main Event, Daniel Craig and Mads Mikkelsen starred in “Casino Royale,” the latest James Bond movie. This author remembers going to opening night of the 007 flick, which ended up being the fourth highest grossing movie of the year. Also seeing it was Diego dilimaa Lima (pictured), and, after the fact, his poker career was born.

We caught up with the Brazilian after he took down the Sunday Storm outright three weeks ago and banked $30,000. “I’m very happy with this result,” Lima told PocketFives. “It’s a monster field.” There were over 35,000 entrants that day.

“I try to play my A-game every day, keep studying, and wait to get good results,” Lima said of his approach to poker. “You have to be patient in these large fields.” He was the lone member of PocketFives to grace the final table and was one of 5,400 players to make the money.

Last year, Lima finished third in the MicroMillions Main Event and bagged almost $60,000 officially. It was, and remains, his largest tracked score to date and is one of two cashes we’ve tracked for him that pass $10,000. “I plan to keep playing tournaments and maybe next year play some live events,” he said of his plans for his latest in the money finish. He’s all about winning massive-field tournaments.

Lima has been playing full-time since last year and is nearing $200,000 in tracked online MTT finishes. He is the 158th ranked player in his home nation and #7 in the city of Salvador. He explained of his career, “In the last year, I have become a grinder and tried to combine playing poker, exercising, and studying every day.”

After he watched “Casino Royale,” Lima was turned onto the game and had friends who played every week. He told us, “I started attending games and making a few bucks. That helped me a lot, but the best thing for my game was my passion. I had the desire to learn more and more. In 2015, I hope to continue playing and evolving every day online and maybe visit Las Vegas for the WSOP.” The WSOP, of course, starts later this month from the Nevada desert and wraps up in mid-July.

We should probably spend a paragraph talking about the Brazil pokercommunity here on PocketFives. Brazil is #4 in our Country Poker Rankings with a combined PLB score of its top 20 players of 97,733 points. It is one of the fastest-growing online poker markets in the world.

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