Making his second appearance as the number one ranked online tournament poker player in the world this week is Dan djk123 Kelly. Playing under the name imabigkidnow on Full Tilt Poker, Kelly re-took the number one slot this week from shaundeeb. Hot on his tail are a pair of three-time Triple Crown winners, moorman1 (ranked second) and AJKHoosier1 (ranked third). It’s been an interesting ride through the rankings over the past month, with flux becoming the norm rather than the exception. Recently, PocketFives.com sat down with Kelly to learn a little bit more about the man behind the curtain and to get his thoughts on what it takes to become the number one player on the PocketFives Worldwide Rankings.

Like several other PocketFivers, Kelly got his start about four years ago. He was in his sophomore year of high school and the online poker boom was in full swing. Poker regularly appeared on television, including the World Poker Tour, which was still a relatively new phenomenon on The Travel Channel. Playing in home games with friends eventually spilled over into playing online. He explained, “I got stated by receiving $10 free for signing up on Royal Vegas. I played a lot of freerolls back then. I ran up a bankroll a lot of times, but usually ended up going bust.”

Kelly’s list of online accomplishments is pretty extensive. For starters, he’s won the PokerStars Nightly Hundred Grand. Kelly has taken down the $100 rebuy on multiple occasions. In March, he finished third in the Full Tilt Poker $750K Guaranteed for a healthy payday of $55,636. He took second in the UltimateBet $200K Guarantee in May for $27,000. During the month of June, he racked up 44 cashes in tournaments that are tracked for the PocketFives.com Rankings for a grand total of $70,000. I asked him what he considers to be his biggest online feat: “I won the PokerStars $100 rebuy on back to back to back days. I was running pretty well then.”

In live play, Kelly cashed for $11,818 by picking up a 24th place finish in the WPT Spanish Championship in May in Barcelona. While many were busy riding down speed slides through a shark tank, Kelly was finishing fourth in a $2,000 buy-in event at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in The Bahamas for $35,680 in January. He’s played in a vast array of tournaments both live and online. He comments on what tournaments are challenging to him: “No matter what, it’s hard to get through a tournament with a lot of people. It doesn’t really matter if many of them are bad players; it’s a numbers game. I’ve had a lot of success in the $100 rebuy. I can’t really explain why. People say that it’s a hard tournament, but I think it’s overrated. There are a lot of good players in it, but I don’t think it’s that tough.”

Kelly is a student at Villanova and will be entering his sophomore year when classes resume this fall. He quipped that he doesn’t “put as much work into school as I should, but I still get by.” It’s certainly not easy juggling school with a highly-profitable poker career, but the Wildcat has been able to balance the two fairly well. He talks about first becoming the number one ranked player on PocketFives, which happened back on July 2nd: “I pay attention to the rankings, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re the best player. When I first started, I looked at the Rankings. I thought it would be cool to be ranked.”

Getting to, and keeping, the number one ranking on PocketFives.com is not easy. Staying there is even more difficult. With success in high-stakes tournaments a must, Kelly offers up his opinion on what it takes to reach the pinnacle on this site: “Play a lot of poker. Try to study and read to get better. You have to put in a lot of volume.” He echoes sentiments by other PocketFivers we’ve talked to on how online poker has changed from four years ago: “It is much more aggressive than it was four years ago when I started and there are a lot of terrible people who play now.”

Congratulations to Dan djk123 Kelly on becoming the number one ranked tournament player in the world. Visit the PocketFives Online Poker Rankings for more information. Thank you to Kelly for taking time out of his hectic schedule to talk with us.