Daniel ‘SmilleThHero’ Smiljkovic enjoyed some of the biggest scores of his career in the month of September. His success in the month not only helped him break into the Online Poker Rankings top 5 for the first time in his career, but it also clinched his second career Online Player of the Month honors in less than a year.

Smiljkovic racked up 4,241 leaderboard points in September thanks to a handful of key victories in some of online poker’s biggest series. At the end of the first week, on September 7, he took down the GGPoker WSOP Online $525 Bounty Hunter High Roller for $16,960 and 435.23 points. The very next day, he was in the winner’s circle again, this time during the 2021 PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker, earning another $61,090 (his largest cash of the month) and 591.61 by winning Event #75 ($530 NLHE).

September 9 was a key date for him as he made several deep runs at the same time, earning five-figure scores and heaps of leaderboard points. It started off with a runner-up finish in the GGPoker WSOP Online $525 Bounty Hunter where he picked up $14,607. The heat continued with a fourth-place result in WCOOP Event #80-L ($019 NLHE PKO Mini Thursday Thrill) for $15,418. At the same time, Smiljkovic was battling at the final table of WCOOP Event #82-H ($2,100 NLHE) where he ended up falling in fifth place for $28,771.

In total, Smiljkovic finished in the money 55 times for a total of $308,708. Not the most volume by any means, but his deep runs in large fields events was enough to help propel him to a career-high ranking of #3 in the world, as well as lift him to the top of the leaderboard.

Lucio ‘Llima92’ Lima (3,866 points) also thrived in the month of September, finishing in second place while climbing to new heights on the Online Poker Rankings.

Lima, currently grinding the mid-to-high stakes, put in a ton of volume last month. He amassed more than 170 in-the-money finishes, seven of which were for five figures, for a total earn of just over $394,000. His largest score came on September 16 when he took down the GGPoker $1,050 Wednesday Double Stack for $58,148 and 531.04 leaderboard points. That barely eclipsed his fifth-place finish in the GGPoker $777 Lucky Sevens on September 5 in which he earned $53,331 and 464.22 points.

He also did damage during the 2021 PokerStars WCOOP. First, on September 10, he final tabled Event #85-H ($2,100 NLHE PKO) for more than $18,000 and 212.32 points. He was back at a WCOOP final table in Event #101-H ($1,050 PLO 6-Max) where he finished in fourth place for $20,090 and another 218.94 points.

By the end of the month, Lima hit as high as #16 in the world, just one spot higher than his current rank of #17.

Russian superstar Anatoly ‘nl_profit’ Filatov rounds out the top 3 for September with 3,565 leaderboard points. In an online career that spans nearly a decade, September was a career month for Filatov which included the largest win of his life.

READ: Career Year of Online Success Takes Anatoly Filatov To $10 Million

On September 21, Filatov won the GGPoker WSOP Circuit Super MILLION$ for $1.2 million, far-and-away the most money he ever won online. However, the tournament didn’t qualify for leaderboard points, missing the cut-off by a single entry.

However, that wasn’t the only score that made Filatov’s fall amazing. Out of his 27 in-the-money finishes, seven were for five figures or more. Although his Super MILLION$ win was likely the highlight of his career, it’s unlikely Filatov ever had another day like September 7. On that day he finished as the runner-up in the GGPoker WSOP High Rollers for $63,252 while at the same time wrapping up a third-place result in WCOOP Event #71 High ($2,100 NHLE) for another $76,538. During both of those tournaments, he was playing on the GGPoker live stream in that week’s Super MILLION$ where he finished in third place for $250,053.

All told, Filatov earned more than $1.7 million of his $12.6 million lifetime online earnings in September.

September 2021 Online Player of the Month Results