On January 18th, 2009, PocketFives.com celebrated its fourth birthday. Now boasting over 64,000 members, the site has become one of the hallmarks of the online poker industry. The very first Online Poker Rankings were compiled as the site launched and perched atop them originally was Chris brsavage Savage. Let’s take a look at how PocketFives has evolved ever since the site was launched at 4:00am on January 18th, 2005. We’ll also put on our party hats and review the evolution of the Rankings, which helped set PocketFives.com apart from the pack in the first place.

A one year anniversary thread that appeared in 2006 by PocketFives.com Co-Founder Cal Spears stated that after the site made its successful debut, “Adam, Riley, Lucky Egg, and I played $1 six handed sng's and went all in every hand while we drank a celebratory beer.” Congratulatory responses by such site members as truesyalose utterczar, and mhoddi then followed. The very first Rankings featured brsavage out in front, followed by loewa79 (second), WestTexasMan (third), P0ker H0 (fourth), Exclusive (fifth), SailorLobell (sixth), Madhattter (seventh), NSXT2 (eighth), gator93 (ninth), and G6Dragon (tenth). Only gator93 continues to be ranked. The original PocketFives Open Champion on March 3rd, 2005, gator93 sits at #65 as of Monday, January 19th, 2009.

On January 31st, 2005, the Rankings expanded to include 60 spots. PocketFives.com Co-Founder Adam Small compiled the list manually, following the action online and then ranking players accordingly. On February 7th, the Rankings encompassed the top 70 players in the world and included several new faces including gank, thedonator, Soupie, and HATJR. In March, World Series of Poker bracelet winner Cliff JohnnyBax Josephy moved up to number two. He would eventually claim the top spot for over a year. In October, the Rankings would once again expand, this time to 75 players. Here’s how the top 10 stood at the end of the first year at the December 26th Rankings Update on PocketFives.com: JohnnyBax (first), SamENole (second), iMsoLucky0 (third), sheets (fourth), TheBeat (fifth), leggggggggggy (sixth), JJProdigy (seventh), DoubleLucky (eighth), gank (ninth), and colson10 (tenth). Check out the history of the PocketFives Rankings.

On October 26th, 2006, PocketFives.com switched over from manual to automatic Rankings. Tmay420 and BeL0WaB0Ve sat perched atop the new field, which was expanded to include 100 players. The changeover involved a significant amount of programming by the PocketFives staff, including setting up relationships with each of the online poker rooms involved. The Rankings are updated every Wednesday and currently paced by Alex AJKHoosier1 Kamberis.

PocketFivesLive.com was launched in 2006 for that year’s WSOP festivities held at the Rio in Las Vegas. The extension of PocketFives.com focuses on providing coverage of online poker players in the biggest live tournaments. P5sLive is fresh off a trip to the Deep South of the United States (Biloxi, Mississippi), the site of the World Poker Tour’s Southern Poker Championship. In that tournament, PocketFiver Allen AawwNutz Carter, who joined the site one month after it was launched, took down the $1 million first place prize. Since its launch, PocketFivesLive.com has also traveled to London for the WSOP Europe, The Bahamas for the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, Aruba for the UltimateBet Aruba Poker Classic, and tournament sites around North America. Coverage is regularly provided by Court Harrington.

Last year, PocketFives.com launched its very own rakeback site. Now, players can take advantage of rakeback opportunities on Action Poker, Betfair, Cake Poker, Carbon Poker, Devilfish Poker, Fortune Poker, Full Tilt Poker, PayNoRake.com, PlayersOnly, and PokerNordica. As part of a white label of rakeback sites, PocketFives.com has been able to bring its members access to some of the top poker rakeback deals around as well as thousands of dollars in monthly rake races and freerolls.

On the celebration of its fourth birthday, Small commented, “It's been an amazing experience to be involved with this site and see it grow from a fun side project being run by three college friends into an international community. The face of the site and the names behind it have changed over the years, but the purpose is still what it always was: to give online tournament players a place to meet one another and have their accomplishments discussed and appreciated.” The site holds an annual party in Las Vegas prior to the WSOP Main Event that allows PocketFivers to meet the faces behind the names once per year.

Thank you to each and every PocketFiver around the world for being a member of the four year-old online poker community. We look forward to year number five.