Earlier this month, Portugal’s faustideo, who is known as Pedro Faustino in the real world, final tabled the PokerStars Sunday Million and walked away with $58,000. There were a little more than 7,100 entrants that week and Faustino chalked up his largest online poker score to date by a factor of three.

“It was a dream come true,” Faustino told PocketFives. “It was a unique experience and I work every day seeking moments like this one.” The largest cash he had generated prior to that fateful Sunday was in the PokerStars Big $162 for $17,000.

He doesn’t have any specific plans for the money other than to continue working hard in poker. He said of his cash infusion, “It was a tournament that started very well for me. I doubled my stack in the first few levels and, after that, I was in the top 100 of the tournament almost all the time. I had one or two key hands, but the fundamental hand was when I put my stack in with eight-high in the last 100 players of the tourney and it went through.”

Portugal is #14 in PocketFives’ Country Poker Rankings with a combined PLB score of its top 20 players of 79,101 points, sandwiched in between Germany and the Czech Republic. “Poker in Portugal is on the rise,” Faustino asserted. “More and more players are becoming skilled and the game is evolving a lot.”

He added, “On the other hand, society is viewing the game in a better way today than it was four or five years ago and that is in part because some great players from Portugal are considered ambassadors of the game itself.” Joao Barbosa, Jonathan FatalErrorAguiar, and Ricardo Sousa are just a few of the Portuguese players who have hit it big in the live poker arena, while players like JDias99, skyboy, and T 54 T 97s (pictured) have carried the torch online.

Faustino got started in poker through home games with friends. He said, “Every day, interest in the game was rising. Then, I started playing online, starting studying the game, and dedicated myself to it. This year, I’m starting to see the fruits of all of my hard work.”

You can find Faustino at #455 worldwide in the PocketFives Online Poker Rankings and #12 in his home country. To date, he has amassed $293,000 in tournament winnings in 1,012 cashes, an average of $290 apiece.

The Sunday Million runs weekly on PokerStars. If you don’t already have a PokerStars account, sign up through the links on PocketFives to get a 100% up to $600 deposit bonus and one free month of Tournament Poker Edge or CardRunners poker training. Get started here.

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