A few days before Christmas, Pablo Nerro (pictured), who is known on PocketFives as Rhyno2008, won the PokerStars Sunday Million outright for $217,000, defeating a field of 7,420 entrants. He took down the lion’s share of the almost $1.5 million awarded and shot up to #3 in his home country of Uruguay.

PocketFives: Congrats on taking down the Sunday Million. Tell us how you’re feeling about it.

Pablo Nerro: Winning the Sunday Million feels really nice, even though I haven’t been able to rest much yet. I’m looking forward to playing again.

PocketFives: Was there talk of a chop at any point?

Pablo Nerro: Only one player mentioned something about making a deal. This first happened when there were five of us left. Then, the same guy kept asking for a deal up until when it was he and I heads-up for the whole thing. I felt I was going to win it the whole time. When there were three of us left and I had three times as many chips as the player who was second in chips, I kept saying to myself that I wanted to win the Sunday Million; I didn’t want to chop it.

PocketFives: Do you have any plans for the money? Will this change your poker career in any way?

Pablo Nerro: I have no immediate plans for the money. If everything turns up okay, I might buy an apartment here in Montevideo in the near future. Regarding poker, I’m probably going to be adding some tournaments to my schedule that I wasn’t playing before like the Second Chance and the $109 Turbos. I still think there are a lot of things about my game that I need to improve, so I won’t be playing higher tournaments than those.

PocketFives: What have your family and friends said about the win?

Pablo Nerro: The first thing I did after winning was wake up my parents at 6:00am and tell them what I had just done. They didn’t know what tournament it was, so I told them how much I won and they couldn’t believe it. I want to say thanks to my friends and everyone who congratulated me. All of those greetings and supportive messages were absolutely amazing. I tried to respond to each and every one of them.

PocketFives: Tell us about poker in Uruguay. How much is the game accepted and who plays? What does society think of the Uruguay pokercommunity?

Pablo Nerro: Each year there are more players playing live tournaments and the big online results are piling up. I think we have a very good group of players in Uruguay. Sadly, for the most part, our beloved sport isn’t broadly accepted and treated as such. Instead, it is commonly seen as gambling and as a bad thing. I hope we can turn this around in the future.

PocketFives: How did you get started in poker? Do you play full-time?

Pablo Nerro: I started playing in 2008, hence my screen name, and I’m dedicated to poker full-time. I was playing micro-limits for the most part up until recently, when I started to focus on studying and getting better. This improved my game a lot and gave me the chance to move up in stakes confidently.

PocketFives: What do you do outside of poker?

Pablo Nerro: Outside of poker, I really like playing soccer and running. Also, I like hanging out with my friends and enjoying the beach during the summer.

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