$3 buy-in gives Online Amateur a Seat at The World Open V

Have you ever sat in front of the box watching a poker tournament and thought I want a piece of that?

Well that’s exactly what amateur poker player Paulo Melo did and thanks to his superb play through our World Open V online qualifying structure the thirty-five year old from The Azures, Portugal now has the chance to get his hands on the prestigious title and the $250,000 top prize.

It all started for ‘Golfinho_33’ way back with a $3 World Open V sub-qualifier satellite.  Our amateur fought through a field of 300 players to claim first spot and a $75 ticket to the next level of the structure.  The step up in standard didn’t faze Paulo at all as he finished in second place, high enough to gain a $700 buy-in to the main World Open V satellite.

Now this is where the big boys start to come in sniffing a chance to win a cheap seat at a major TV tournament but once again Paolo battled his way through the field and from the lowly initial stake of $3 Paolo had won a package worth a cool $13,000 to the PartyPoker.com World Open V!

Unbelievably the Portuguese player has only been playing at PartyPoker.com for a year after his friends suggested he try his luck at our poker site.  He mainly plays at the low-limit sit ‘n’ go tables and the odd satellite to our offline events.

To make it through to the heats of the World Open V has been a big experience for Paolo as this will be his first live tournament.  “To play at the World Open V is a dream come true because I have watched the pros on TV and now it’s my chance to compete with the best.  It’s doesn’t matter if I win or lose, qualifying for the tournament was the real achievement.”

Paolo will play in heat 5 with such poker luminaries as WSOP Main Event finalist Andy Black, PartyPoker European Open winner Liam Flood and Team PartyPoker Pro Bodo Sbrzesny.  I’m sure you’ll all join me in wishing him the best of luck and you can keep up to date with Paolo’s progress over at twitter.com/partypokernews or our facebook fan page facebook.com/partypoker.