Each Sunday The PocketFives Milestone Report looks at the online poker players who are achieving career-best achievement or reaching new heights in the rankings.

Joao ’joaosimaobh’ Simao Hits $5 Million in Lifetime Earnings

Brazilian online poker players are a passionate, talented group and one of the best is Joao ’joaosimaobh’ Simao. This week Simao had a succession of four-figure scores, mostly on partypoker, to push his lifetime online earnings past $5,000,000, joining Caio Pessagno and Caio Cesar Pimenta as the only Brazilians to crack that barrier.

Brandon ‘tedSTRETCH’ Merrill Grinds His Way Past $4 Million in Earnings

Life in Colombia is clearly treating Brandon ‘tedSTRETCH’ Merrill well. The #5-ranked player in Colombia cashed 58 times this week for $9,445 in earnings, but more importantly, he broke through the $4 million lifetime earnings barrier. His biggest cash came on iPoker where he earned $1,656 for finishing runner-up in a 71-player field. Merrill is also closing in on 10,000 career tracked cashes – needing just 210 more to hit five figures.

Other Lifetime Earnings Milestones

Poland’s ‘bartek901’ and the #1-ranked player in Croatia, Ivan Karlo Banic, both passed $2 million in lifetime earnings. Russian ‘msksevart’ joined the seven-figure club
Three other players, ‘vezec’, ‘pasarela’ and ‘1111AA1111’ all cracked the $500,000 mark.

Top Ranked Aussie Continues to Climb

While the news wasn’t great for Australian poker players this week, ‘RoryYoung’ soared to a new all-time high ranking. Entering the week at #23 in the world and #1 in Australia, ‘RoryYoung’ found one cash big enough to add to his PLB points total to move up to #21 – an all-time personal high.

He was just one of 10 players ranked in the top 100 to achieve career highs.

• ‘mbo90‘ from #31 to #29
• ‘STiger‘ from #35 to #32
• ‘brunovolks‘ from #44 to #37
• Diego ‘MrBittar’ Bittar from #59 to #50
• ‘Gedis92‘ from #67 to #54
• ‘Sphinx87‘ from #65 to #61
• ‘Jobytoyce‘ from #69 to #68
• Adrijan ‘adrijan_s’ Sinishtaj from #82 to #80
• Andres ‘lordzefiro’ Buitrago from #101 to #92

Brazil’s Edgar ‘edg40’ Almeida Hits Career Best Score – PLB and Earnings

Simao wasn’t the only Brazilian player to have a big week. Edgar ‘edg40’ Almeida took full advantage of the boosted guaranteed prize pool in sixth anniversary edition of the PokerStars Sunday Storm event to hit a couple of all-time highs. Almeida outlasted 131,714 other players to win $107,731.84 after chopping heads-up. His previous career-high cash was almost two full years ago when he won $18,236. The big win also earned him 1,147.67 PLB points, by far a career best. Prior to Sunday, the most Almeida earned in a single event was 92.37 points.