{"id":128131,"date":"2021-05-13T13:20:41","date_gmt":"2021-05-13T13:20:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog?p=128131"},"modified":"2021-09-01T08:02:25","modified_gmt":"2021-09-01T08:02:25","slug":"using-daily-legends-to-build-a-poker-career-from-scratch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog\/en\/using-daily-legends-to-build-a-poker-career-from-scratch.html","title":{"rendered":"Using Daily Legends to Build a Poker Career From Scratch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Flavio Yuji Kumoto<\/strong> is a 26-year-old poker player who is grinding away, hoping to establish himself as a profitable &#8220;reg.&#8221; The Brazilain, with Japanese ancestry, recently won Leaderboard 2 of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/en\/daily-legends\/legend-of-the-week\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Legend of the Week<\/strong><\/a> promotion. This is his story.<\/p>\n<p>Kumoto won the $5.50 buy-in Headhunter, which stood him in good stead to walk away with the leaderboard&#8217;s top honours, but he knew he still needed to put in some consistent results over the course of the week.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Although I knew of the promotion, I had no specific strategy. After winning <a href=\"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/en\/daily-legends\/the-headhunter-schedule\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>The Headhunter<\/strong><\/a> on Thursday, I saw I was third in the standings, so I cancelled my planned breaks to go all-in for first place.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Victory in Leaderboard 2 was assured on Saturday when Kumoto finished 12th in The Headhunter.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It was really cool because while I was playing, I was looking for the nicknames of other competitors in the rankings to see if they stood a chance of catching me.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h2>More Than $400 Profit From his Free Tickets<\/h2>\n<p>Finishing first on Leaderboard 2 saw Kumoto bank a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/en\/daily-legends\/the-one-shot-schedule\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>$111 One Shot<\/strong><\/a> ticket, two <strong>$150 Daily Legends<\/strong> entries, and a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/en\/daily-legends\/the-gladiator-schedule\"><strong>$55 Gladiator<\/strong><\/a> seat. The Brazilian had previously played higher stakes tournaments on his own dime, but the pressure was now off because he secured these tickets for free.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Legend of the Week prizes were awesome for me. I missed playing high stakes events. Competing with no pressure was even better.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Kumoto put the tickets to good use and managed to reel in more than $400 thanks to the bounty formats of some of the Daily Legends he won tickets for.<\/p>\n<p>The 26-year-old is a professional poker player who grinds the small stakes at partypoker. His career was on an upward trajectory when disaster struck: <strong>the COVID-19 pandemic<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Kumoto joined <strong>the 4Bet team<\/strong>, a prominent poker team in his native Brazil led by Brazilian sensation <strong>Will Arruda<\/strong>. The coaching and professional setup saw Kumoto progress from playing $0.25 buy-in tournaments to taking shots at $109 buy-in events.<\/p>\n<h2>COVID-19 Pandemic Halts Kumoto&#8217;s Progress<\/h2>\n<p>Then the reality of the global COVID-19 pandemic hit home and put the brakes on his poker career.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My father ended up losing his job, and things got really tight, financially speaking. My family ended up being really affected by the pandemic, and I chose not to renew my deal with 4Bet. I could not commit to them without knowing if I would be able to continue <a href=\"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\">playing poker<\/a> like I used to do.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>His father losing his job was not the first blow Kumoto endured. In 2015, four years after being introduced to poker, bizarrely, by a teacher in high school, Kumoto dropped out of college to help care for his sick grandmother.<\/p>\n<h2>Personal Tragedy Inspires Kumoto<\/h2>\n<p>All the time Kumoto had invested into studying the game via books and by winning a poker training course with <strong>Alexandre Mantovani<\/strong>, looked to have been for nothing, but family always comes first.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;At the end of 2015, my family began to experience problems, and I was forced to drop out of college. My grandmother was very sick, and I practically started to spend all my time taking care of her. I managed to sometimes find the time to read something about poker or play a table or two on my phone.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Poker became an outlet for Kumoto, a game he could play to get away from the stresses and strains of caring for a sick loved one. Even without a single cent in his bankroll, Kumoto was determined to become a professional poker player.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;At that time, away from college, it started to occur to me to dedicate myself 100% to poker, but I couldn&#8217;t play a lot of volume. I played whenever I could, and most of the time, it was on my cell phone.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sadly, Kumoto&#8217;s grandmother passed away in 2017. After dealing with his tragic loss, Kumoto&#8217;s desire to make it in the poker world intensified. There was a significant problem in his plans; he did not have a bankroll.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h2>Going Broke Before Adopting a More Professional Attitude<\/h2>\n<p>&#8220;I tried to raise a bankroll from $0 by playing freeroll and penny tournaments. I used to try and move up without any bankroll control, and I always ended up going broke. <strong>I went broke more than 20 times<\/strong> with my small bankroll. I used to build and then waste it until I became a more professional player.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Kumoto now has an average buy-in of $11 but has his sights set far higher. The man who counts Brazilian legends <a href=\"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog\/en\/dzivelevski-and-adams-win-high-rollers-molnar-leads-mini-main-event.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Yuri Martins<\/strong><\/a> and <strong>Dan Almeida<\/strong> among his poker idols, would love to return to the 4Bet team. Until that happens, Kumoto will continue studying away from the tables while evolving his game in our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/en\/daily-legends\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Daily Legends<\/strong><\/a> tournaments.<\/p>\n<h3>Love poker? Join party!<\/h3>\n<p>If you\u2019re ready to jump into the action, then <a href=\"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/en\/download\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>click here to download partypoker and get started<\/strong>!<\/a><\/p>\n<p>If you already have an account with us, click here to <a href=\"https:\/\/promo.partypoker.com\/en\/promo\/launch\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>open partypoker and hit the tables!<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Flavio Yuji Kumoto is a 26-year-old poker player who is grinding away, hoping to establish himself as a profitable &#8220;reg.&#8221; The Brazilain, with Japanese ancestry, recently won Leaderboard 2 of the Legend of the Week promotion. This is his story. Kumoto won the $5.50 buy-in Headhunter, which stood him in good stead to walk away<\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog\/en\/using-daily-legends-to-build-a-poker-career-from-scratch.html\" title=\"Read More\">Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":128134,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1309,300],"tags":[23753,32846,184,1424,1425,419],"yst_prominent_words":[3632,2657,23739,41708,23765,4281,3599,2582,4425,4422,4423,4424,7114,4416],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128131"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128131"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":148232,"href":"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128131\/revisions\/148232"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128131"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.partypoker.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=128131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}