Back in November of last year, GGPoker released episode one of a new “Online Poker Millionaires” series on YouTube. That episode featured a behind-the-scenes look at the life of accomplished poker pro and coach, Alex Theologis, who had nearly $10 million in GGPoker earnings at the time of filming.
On Wednesday night, GGPoker finally released the second episode of their Online Poker Millionaires series, where they filmed Brazilian superstar Kelvin Kerber. The online poker giants went down to Balneário Camboriú in Brazil to film his day-to-day life and to look at his journey from a $3 bankroll to international stardom.
Home-field advantage
In one of the opening scenes, Kerber explains how the currency in Brazil is weak, so being able to escape poverty through online poker is a very realistic possibility.
Kelber told the GGPoker YouTube team that once he started, there wasn’t any other career choice for him.
“A player making $1,000 per month is making a good amount of money in Brazil. This is not very hard to make if you’re a professional poker player. It should be easy, very easy.
“So whenever I started, even playing like $5 tournaments, $11 tournaments, it was enough for me to have a decent life from it.
“It made sense for me not to think about any other career, any other thing to do financially. It was already clear for me that this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”
He told the GGPoker cameras that he generally plays around $30,000 worth of buy-ins every Sunday, the biggest day of the week for online poker players. He said that during the week, using Thursday as a specific example, his buy-ins are roughly $12,000 to $13,000.
Starting from the bottom
Kerber’s tale starts like many other iconic poker stories, where a small tournament win leads to a lifetime of riches.
“I remember my first-ever real money tournament, I think it was only five players. The buy-in was $1, and my friend gave me the buy-in.
“I won $4. So I gave them the $1 back, I had $3, and that’s how my bankroll started. That was in 2009. In August of 2011, I started playing professionally. Just $5 and $11 tournaments, and the next year, it kept growing. Everything happened very fast.
“In the past four years, the year I made the least, I made $250,000. The year I made the most, I made $450,000. Over the past two years, I’ve been playing just two times a week. Even without binking a large tournament, I was able to make a bit over $300,000 both years.”
Clearly, it wasn’t an easy path from the start, and Kerber made the most of it. If he hadn’t succeeded from the start, life could have been extremely different for both him and his family.
“When I started playing poker, my family was in one of the worst scenarios. My mom had two jobs, I worked the whole day, just to give pretty much all of my salary just to pay the bills at home, so it was a long struggle.”
A memorable 12 months
Kerber finally won his maiden WSOP bracelet in the unlikeliest of ways in 2025, taking down the $1,000 Tag Team event with fellow Brazilian Peter Patricio. Four months later, he won the Ace Poker League Zodiac Goat Super High Roller on GGPoker for about $158,000, his largest online score.
A couple of days later, he took part in the $100,000 Triton Main Event at WSOP Paradise, where he finished 11th for a career-high $415,000.
He’s continued his hot run in 2026, where he participated in his very first Triton series. He was extremely successful in Jeju, playing eight events and reaching three final tables. Two fifth-place finishes and a third gave nearly $1 million in cashes, including bounties.
Kerber has very quickly reached the top-10 on Brazil’s all-time money list, accumulating well over $4.1 million in career live tournament earnings. We know that he’s only getting started with live high roller career. We’ll be sure to see him grinding this summer’s WSOP.
