On December 20th, Griffin Flush_EntityBenger (pictured), the top player in the Poker Rankings, took down the PartyPoker $10,000 Guaranteedfor $3,300. Three days later, he emerged victorious in two contests on the Ongame Network site Betfairfor over $12,000 total. On December 24th, his very first Triple Crown was complete after Benger won the PokerStars $12,000 Guaranteed for $5,200. For good measure, he took down the PokerStars $22,000 Guaranteed on Christmas Day for $7,700. That’s a lot of wins in less than a week.

His first Triple Crown sparked a lively Poker Community thread. He’s piled up over $2.3 million in tracked cashes during his tournament career and recently final tabled a PokerStars WCOOP event for nearly $100,000. We caught up with Benger as he was eight-tabling to get his take on the Triple Crown. You’ll see that he’s an excellent at multitasking.

PocketFives: You took down about a half-dozen tournaments en route to your first Triple Crown. Were you just in the zone trying hard to win one?

Griffin Benger: I set a lot of ambitious goals for 2011 and getting a Triple Crown was one of them. It was definitely a monkey off my back because I’d had a few opportunities over the last month or two since I’ve expanded to other sites like Betfair, Titan Poker, and Ladbrokes. To do it so convincingly was very satisfying.

PocketFives: Why was winning a Triple Crown so important to you in the first place?

Griffin Benger: All sites really don’t play the same. You have to make adjustments because players on sites like Titan play drastically different than the average player on a site like PokerStars. So, even though I’ve had a better year on Stars than I could have hoped for, it was important to me to have the same level of success elsewhere. I think that’s what the Triple Crown represents to me.

Also, there’s just so much value on some of these European sites that other regs are missing out on. I think that’s one of the things that makes Chris moorman1 Moorman (pictured) the greatest online tournament player ever. He’s been all over all the value tournaments on other sites since the beginning and that’s evident in his 11 Triple Crowns.

PocketFives: You’re the top player in the Online Poker Rankings and in Canada. Talk about the importance to you of holding down the #1 spot.

Griffin Benger: To be honest, I became less motivated once I reached #1. As gratifying as it felt, it was also a little bittersweet. Since most of the best players haven’t been able to play since Black Friday, I felt like Keanu Reeves in “The Replacements.” I started playing fewer days and playing spewier than usual.

But, once I saw guys like theczar19and telks moving past me in the Rankings, I became very refocused, recognizing that this was my opportunity to prove to myself and the community that I wasn’t just the “best of the leftovers.” I wanted to prove that I could compete with better and more established players like those two.

PocketFives: Do you feel like you’re a poker celebrity? Is there any added pressure that comes with that distinction?

Griffin Benger: Every day, I feel like I get more attention from people on the rail and players on my table, and it’s not just references to my “What up now, Swedes” YouTube video. It’s nice to get attention for my poker accomplishments rather than my Counter-Strike ones and that’s one of the reasons I used a different alias in poker, so I could reinvest and reestablish myself in a different and more profitable kind of computer game. I think I’ve been able to do that.

Visit the Triple Crown Wall of Championsto learn more. Post your congrats in the thread in Poker Community.