Brazil’s Marco Nery de Morais (pictured), who is known on PocketFives as Marcomorais, typically sticks to playing online poker on smaller sites. We think that approach might change a bit given a recent outright victory in the PokerStars Sunday $100 Rebuy for $49,000, a tournament that saw him emerge victorious from a pack of nearly 900 entrants.

He was in disbelief following his trademark online poker score, telling PocketFives in a virtual meet-up, “It’s an amazing feeling because it’s one of the hardest tournaments on a Sunday and has a really good prize pool. This will definitely give me a good boost to my career.” He is up to over $400,000 in tracked online MTT earnings, about three-quarters of which has come on PokerStars.

Fellow PocketFivers gifuhornaand barbar9999 finished in second and third place, respectively, in that week’s Sunday $100 Rebuy, so we asked Morais for a quick scouting report on each. His response: “They were good players. barbar9999 was a very aggressive player whom I fought with a few times during the tournament. I just played with gifuhorna at the final table. He was short on chips, so he played tighter, but during the heads-up match, he played much more aggressively. They are both very good players.”

It was his largest tracked score by a factor of four. “I’m going to get some coaching with some good guys here from Brazil,” Morais said when asked how he’d use the money. “I’m also going to invest in my poker bankroll and pay some bills.”

This was just his second time entering the PokerStars Sunday $100 Rebuy. “It never was on my tournament schedule,” he told us, “but I put it on my plate that Sunday and it was a perfect start.” He bought in twice initially and explained, “In the beginning, I got some chips and did okay, but in the middle, I lost two flips to fall to only a few big blinds. I started to shine and in about 10 hands after that, I was already at 25 big blinds.”

He said he was active at the final table and, at one point three-handed, Morais had half of the chips in play. By the time heads-up rolled around, he sat with 75%. He added, “The field was very tough. I always had more than five good players at my table.”

The member of the Brazil pokercommunity got started in poker in the beginning of 2006. He explained, “I always played poker with my friends, but it was hard to get everyone together, so we discovered Everest Poker. We climbed up to the higher levels on that site. I have played my whole life on smaller sites like Everest, BestPoker, and PartyPoker and I started playing regularly on PokerStars recently.”

Why would he largely stick to smaller online poker rooms? “I am used to the smaller fields,” he contended. “I know almost every good player who plays there.” We’ll see how much he continues to gravitate toward smaller sites going forward given his recent success on PokerStars.

Morais wanted to send a shout out to a few players who have helped him along the way, including Rafael rwpradoWatanabe do Prado, Edison RobertoSilva de Oliveira, GM_VALTER, Thiago KKremateCrema (pictured), WIll hellzitoArruda, Sketch, Bruno BrunoliraLira, and Caio caiobrites Brites. He explained, “They all helped me with so many things. I’d like to give them the honor of celebrating my championship with me.”

Morais is #44 in the PocketFives Poker Rankings for Brazil, which is home to over 2,000 registered PocketFives members. The group has combined for $169 million in tracked tournament cashes, including nearly $16 million over the last three months.

The Sunday $100 Rebuy and other big-time tournaments run regularly on PokerStars. If you don’t already have a PokerStars account, sign up through PocketFives’ link and make a deposit to get one free month of PocketFives MTT Training. You’ll also get a 100% up to $600 sign-up bonus. Click here for PocketFives’ PokerStars link.

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