Joao ’joaosimaobh’ Simao found his way back into the top 10 this week (Danny Maxwell photo)

Seven weeks ago ‘C Darwin2‘ overtook Joao ’joaosimaobh’ Simao for the #1 spot on the PocketFives rankings and he hasn’t relinquished it since. The Swedish grinder added to his lead this week over Joao Mathias ‘‘joaomathias’ Baumgarten, who also gave up ground to the rest of the field.

‘C Darwin2’ built on his lead with just one cash. He took fifth in the $80,000 888poker Whale for for $5,187 and 111.94 points. He’s now over 515 PLB points ahead of Baumgarten who didn’t record a single cash in the last seven days.

Sweden’s ‘lena900‘, who moved up to #3 from #6 last week, stayed at #3 even though he too failed to find the scoreboard in the last seven days. His last cash came on August 14 when he finished third in the Winamax High Roller.

Conor ‘1_conor_b_1’ Beresford and Aleksandr ‘NoPlanB’ Mordvinov swapped spots this week with Beresford moving up to #4 and Mordvinov falling to #5. Beresford finished second in the PokerStars Hot $215 for $5,860 and 131.62 points and then posted two big wins. On Saturday he won the partypoker $530 buy-in High Roller for $7,840 and 158.9 points and he followed that up on Sunday by beating 167 other players in a $109 SixMax, Hyper-Turbo NLHE event on PokerStars for an additional $3,528 and 132.06 points. He now leads Mordvinov by just 4.71 points.

Artem ‘veeea’ Vezhenkov returned to action after a nearly week break and continues to hover just outside of the top five. The former #1-ranked player won the PokerStars $162 Ultra Deep Stacks NLHE for $2,795 and 94.07 points – the only one of his 21 cashes that counted towards his ranking.

Joao ‘joaosimaobh’ Simao was the #1-ranked player in the world as recently as June 5. If he has another week like the one he just finished, he could find himself back in top spot. Simao beat out 817 other players to win the 888poker $30,000 Weightlifting High Roller for $7,475 and 202.67 PLB points. The next day he won the $320 Six Max NLHE event on PokerStars for $5,198 and 109.54. He won the PokerStars $109 rebuy on Thursday ($4,552 / 83.69), finished runner-up in the PokerStars Hot $215 ($5654 / 129.28) and then fifth in the Big $109 on Tuesday night ($2,660 / 88.64). Those five scores propelled the Brazilian from #12 to #7.

Simao’s return to the top 10 meant that one player had to fall out of the top 10. Bulgaria’s Alex ‘alexd2’ Dimitrov, who broke into the top 10 for the first time in his career last week fell all the way to #12. Dimitrov earned his 63rd career win after beating out 63 other players in the $109 buy-in $5,000 Hurricane on 888poker on Sunday.

The Current Top 10

RANK

PLAYER POINTS

PREVIOUS

1
C Darwin2 7,600.25
1
2
joaomathias 7,184.48
2
3
lena900 6,913.47
3
4
1_conor_b_1 6,724.84
5
5
NoPlanB 6,720.13
4
6
veeea 6,570.75
6
7
joaosimaobh 6,515.78
12
8
Pot4teUS 6,507.54
8
9
Jmolloy 6,482.31
10
10
Greenstone25 6,441.37
7