Simple Poker Systems leads Brazilian student to Fenomeno win

BBZ Poker student João Havryluk remembers the exact moment he decided he wanted to become a poker pro.

The 29-year-old from Ponta Grossa, Paraná State, Brazil studied in Spain for a year and deposited €10 online. He played freerolls and micro-stakes tournaments, but also improved his skills by purchasing a Flopzilla license and watching the streams of Lex Veldhuis and Fintan Hand.

After five months of grinding at a €2 average buy-in (ABI), Havryluk had made around €2,400.

“That was good money for an exchange student,” he says, and he used it to upgrade his computer setup and travel with friends.

“I remember being on a ferry to Ibiza and telling a friend that I had decided that I wanted to play poker for a living,” he says. “Although I didn’t know if it would happen.”

Today, Havryluk is living that dream. But had he not found BBZ Brazil and the BBZ Poker bundles, it probably wouldn’t have happened.

When he returned to Brazil and finished his degree in graphic design, he joined a poker team and tried to combine his play with his graphic design job. “That was a disaster,” he says. “I didn’t play for more than a year, it seemed like the end of my career.”

So how did BBZ enter the picture?

“Bruno Pannek, who’s a BBZ player now, told me that he has a friend setting up a Brazilian poker team with BBZ backing,” says Havryluk. “That seemed to be the perfect opportunity, so I applied and got to talk with Lucas and Thiago, both coaches on the Brazil end. The call was very nice and I started right after. It’s been and year and 3 months.”

Havryluk now plays an ABI of $9 and enters between 20 and 30 tournaments a day, taking Wednesdays and Saturdays off. But he recently enjoyed a big score in a very special tournament for Brazilian players, so his poker agenda might change moving forward.

He entered the $11 Mini Fenomeno on PokerStars, a tournament designed for Brazilian players in terms of both time zones and its name (soccer legend Ronaldo was nicknamed ‘Fenomeno’, or ‘phenomenon’).

“I think most folks in Brazil are intense and love competition,” Havryluk says when asked why poker is so popular among Brazilians. “Poker is cool because it brings out a mix of emotions and everyone can get in on the action. Not to mention the perk of earning a good salary in dollars, which is five times stronger than our currency.”

Havryluk – who plays on PokerStars as “JVDEPAULA” – went on to win the Mini Fenomeno, topping a 3,839-entry field to win $5,385, one of his best scores yet.

“I’m not too keen on big fields, I can’t lie,” he admits. “It’s a marathon of decisions and emotions. I’ve been fortunate to go deep in some big fields, like winning the Mini Fenomeno and the Mini Daily Cooldown, and run deep in the Sunday Storm twice this year (10th place and 12th place). That was great, but now I’m focusing on reducing my average field to the max I can.”

In his BBZ Brags Discord post, Havryluk shouts the Simple Poker Systems bundle specifically as the training product that helped him the most.

“I’ve been studying river bluffing, c-bet folding flops, and defending flops (calls and raises),” he says. “Jordan’s teaching is amazing. I was able to understand, build a strategy, and be confident in the spots that I was unsure how to play before.”

The score has not only helped Havryluk financially, but mentally too.

“I feel more confident and less pressured than before, and I’m enjoying the process and feeling great about my evolution.”