By
Dan |
Published
Nov 01 2009, 02:27 PM
Class is in session. Grayson the_dean22 Nichols vaulted from #67 to #53 worldwide in the PocketFives.com Online Poker Rankings at their last calculation on the strength of holding the 45th best PLB score in the community. He’s probably best known for final-tabling Event #9 ($200+15 NLHE) of the 2009 PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP), grabbing $89,000 for his fifth place showing. One week later, he was the runner-up in the Full Tilt Poker $1K Monday, padding his bankroll with another $57,000.
As a result of a solid month of October that saw Nichols rack up $93,000 in tournaments that are tracked for the Rankings, the PocketFives.com member from Florida rose 14 spots on the leaderboard to #53 in the world. On the accomplishment, Nichols told PocketFives.com, “That is a big achievement for me, just based on the company that I will be sharing in the Rankings. It's humbling to be on the same level as many of the other top 100 ranked players.”
Recent scores by the PocketFiver include wins in the
PokerStars $3 rebuy for $13,000 and a victory in the
$30,000 Super Turbo Guaranteed on Full Tilt for $10,000. On the former event, Nichols explained, “The $3 rebuy was actually a pretty big win for me. I play the small buy-in rebuys on PokerStars quite a bit, mostly because I find shoving every hand of the rebuy hour to be quite a great tilt reliever and fun at the same time.”
He notes, however, that his most memorable cash remains his appearance at the WCOOP Event #9 final table, which netted him one of the largest paydays of his career. Nichols explained, “I had been in makeup for over a year leading up to that event, so to get a score that got me out of makeup and profit for myself was quite a big deal.”
Prior to playing in the WCOOP tournament, he drove to Orlando from visiting his girlfriend in Gainesville and was coming down with a cold. Nineteen hours after entering the grueling contest, Nichols busted in fifth. He recalled, “Despite getting far and away my biggest score, I was still bummed afterwards knowing how much money I left on the table.”
Nichols became involved in poker through home games with friends and then began competing online on
PartyPoker. He attended the
University of Florida in Gainesville and was pursuing a political science degree before leaving two years ago just one foreign language credit shy of completion. Nichols explained, “Despite being a textbook procrastinator at school, as many fellow online poker players can understand, I expect to have my degree in December or spring at the latest.” Nichols was a Gator for five years.
Nichols has two cashes in
World Series of Poker (WSOP) tournaments for a combined $5,300; both came in 2007. Also that year, he finished 20th in a $1,000 buy-in event held during the
Ultimate Bet Aruba Poker Classic for $18,000.
After his girlfriend diverted his attention for a few minutes, Grayson told us that he wanted to send a shout out to a bevy of PocketFivers: “I'd like to thank Alex
AJKHoosier1 Kamberis (pictured at right) and Steve
gboro780 Gross for putting in a lot of time with me this year and helping my game in ways I never could have done on my own. I also want to thank a few of my best friends that are PocketFivers - J.C.
0verthetop42 West, Michael
dapalma150 Palma, and Gary
GB2005 Bogdanski - for all of their support in the past years as well.”
Check out who else has been making waves on the virtual felts by visiting the PocketFives.com
Online Poker Rankings.