In the final update of the PocketFives.com Online Poker Rankingsin April, Tony D1rtyR1v3rNardi rose from #32 worldwide to #25 on the strength of the 23rd best PLB score and 20th best Pro Poll score. Nardi hails from Wisconsin and, in addition to the Rankings badge in his profile, also owns a Triple Crown. The longtime PocketFives.com member won the Full Tilt Poker $100 rebuy ($125,000 Guaranteed) in mid-April for $39,000 and sat down with us to recap his rise to the top.

On his success in the $100 rebuy on Full Tilt, Nardi explained, “I’ve been working on my game a bit with my friend _cwp394_ (pictured at left). We’ve been going over a lot of hand histories and I’ve always struggled on Full Tilt Poker. I really have been focusing on the little parts of my game.” Eleven days prior, Nardi took down the $100,000 Guaranteed version of the Full Tilt $100 rebuy. He admitted, “All of my results are in rebuys and turbos. I’ve always liked rebuys and like that you have more opportunities to exploit people who don’t know how to play deep stacks.”
In late 2007, Nardi final tabled the Full Tilt Poker $750,000 Guaranteed. Then, he went on to win the PokerStars $100 rebuy and take second in the site’s Nightly Hundred Grand. For someone with so many accomplishments, which one reigns supreme? Nardi admitted, “When I won the Friday Special on PartyPoker. Two days later, I won the Sunday Million outright. That was my biggest accomplishment considering I didn’t know what I was doing in tournament poker; I was a cash game grinder. My roommate had read ‘Kill Phil,’ told me about it, and I had instant success. That’s what turned me on to the tournament aspect of it.”

Nardi learned poker from watching family members play. As you’d expect, his relatives are now firmly behind his online poker career: “They’re all so supportive. That’s a big factor is having a good support system behind you.” Two months into schooling at a technical college, Nardi left to pursue poker, which was providing him with a solid income. However, the decision was far from easy: “My parents were disappointed when I dropped out, but as a few months went by, they were supportive, but leery. When I got my first big tournament win is when they started coming around.”

Ongoing on the virtual felts of PokerStars is the annual Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP), which boasts a colossal $45 million guaranteed prize pool across three tiers of events. You’ll find Nardi battling in most mid-stakes tournaments. He’s also fresh off grinding the Full Tilt Online Poker Series (FTOPS) and plans to relax before diving head-on into the 2010 World Series of Poker (WSOP) later this month: “Last year, I took a break to go on a fishing trip with my dad and brothers right before the WSOP, so I plan to do that again this year. I’ll try to take a week off in between.”

Nardi will be out in Las Vegas at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino for the final three weeks of the WSOP, a truncated schedule from years past. He explained, “I can’t afford to be there for two months. I did that the last two years and it was pretty expensive. I’ll probably play in a few $1,500 events and the Main Event while I’m there.” Nardi cashed twice during last year’s tournament series for $10,000 total. In 2008, he placed third in a $1,000 tournament during the Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza for $29,000.

See who else has been crushing online by visiting the PocketFives.com Online Poker Rankings.