On January 15th and 22nd, Rafael Monteiro (pictured), better known as LiroLaon PocketFives, recorded final tables in Sunday Majors on back-to-back weekends. One of them was even for a win to boot. On January 15th, Monteiro and 3,600 other poker players entered the weekly PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up and vied for a $734,000 prize pool. When the smoke cleared, Monteiro took third place, the highest finishing spot for a PocketFiver, and walked away with $60,000.

One week later, it was business as usual for Monteiro, this time in the PokerStars Sunday Second Chance. He officially registered a $45,000 payday for the win in that tournament and etched his name in the halls of poker history. As if all that winning weren’t enough, on the very first day of 2012, he finished third in the PokerStars Bigger $55 for over $20,000.

“I started the year with a nice score and, fortunately, two weeks later, I got my best score ever in the Sunday Warm-Up,” Monteiro told us in an exclusive interview. “I usually run well in the Warm-Up and that day, everything happened great to me until the final table. With seven players left, I was super short-stacked, but came back and finished third.”

We asked him to walk us through his Second Chance victory, which has helped him in part to leap to #227 worldwide in the PocketFives Poker Player Rankings: “The Sunday Second Chance win was pretty unexpected. My day wasn’t turning out to be a good one and, after some hours of grinding, I could see only the $11 Freezeout and Second Chance in front of me. I focused on both and played well against the tough field of the Second Chance. The heads-up part was against a great player and so hard, but finally I won.” He edged out PokerStars member DYBYDX in the Second Chance.

What’s been the secret to his success? How has he been able to come out of the gates swinging in 2012? He told us, “I try to be focused all the time, always thinking about the best line to use, for example.I’ve improved my psychological factor because last year was not good. I saw it as a test and tried to improve my skills as much as I could, including on the psychological front.” Monteiro added that videos and poker strategy articles helped lead to his newfound glory.

Perhaps also contributing to his recent success is the fact that he’s out of school for vacation until March and can wholly focus on the game. He observed that he usually plays better when school is out.

The PocketFiver calls Florianópolis, Brazil (pictured) home and he’s been a member of the online poker community for nearly two years. On how he got started in poker, he recalled, “I started in early 2008. My school didn’t start until August of that year, so I had six months to do absolutely nothing. I was searching for something to spend my time on and found some sites about poker. I won $1 in a forum and started playing some micro sit and gos. From there, I just studied and my game evolved.”

He has $450,000 in tracked cashes on PocketFives, one-third of which has come in January alone. Additionally, he has turned in over $400,000 in winnings on PokerStars alone. In February 2011, he grabbed an online poker Triple Crown by virtue of winning tournaments on PokerStars, UB, and Full Tilt.

He concluded by saying, “I would like to thank the PocketFives team. I always read the interviews on the site and never imagined that one day I would be interviewed.” Visit PokerStars to sign up for the Sunday Warm-Up and Second Chance.