On Wednesday, Sweden’s Andreas Berggren (pictured, image courtesy poker.se), known as r4ndomr4gsin the online poker world, became the new #1 player in the PocketFives Rankings. This is his second stint at #1 and he is fresh off final tabling the PokerStars Sunday 500 over the weekend for $44,000, which helped put him over the top. PocketFives managed to run down this top talent to talk a little poker.

PocketFives: How are you feeling about being ranked #1 on PocketFives?

Andreas Berggren: It feels great. It’s one more thing to check off my “to do” list. It would be nice to try to keep a top 10 spot for as long as I can.

PocketFives: Sweden is #2 in the PocketFives Country Poker Rankingsand Swedes own three of the top four spots worldwide. What’s in the water there?

Andreas Berggren: I don’t know. As some Swedes have said, during the winter, it’s not that nice weather outside, which leaves a bit more time for us to spend in front of the computer. Also, we are a pretty large group of players who talk a lot of poker and travel, and many of the Swedes who are now ranked high on PocketFives have been around for many years. So, there are a lot of hours they have put into their game and a lot of volume.

PocketFives: Do you talk poker with some of the other higher ranked Swedes?

Andreas Berggren: I talk pretty much daily to inhoo(pictured), lena900, eisenhower1, and 42ayay, mostly on Skype, but there are many more of the highly ranked Swedish players I talk to. Almost all of the Swedes on PocketFives know each other in some way, but some of them I mostly talk to during live tournaments.

PocketFives: Nice job in the Sunday 500, by the way. Tell us about that win and how it went. It was missing a lot of regs, right?

Andreas Berggren: The Sunday 500 isn’t a tournament in which I’ve had many (if any) final tables in the past, so it was nice to finally do well in that one. The field probably was a bit softer and smaller in general because of the WSOP, but it is always going to have a lot of tough competition in it.

The Sunday 500 starts pretty late for us too. I had to play all night and finished around 10 in the morning to get second. I usually have a bit too many MTTs running at the time it starts and that could be one reason I usually don’t make it deep, besides the tougher field.

PocketFives: How did you get started in poker originally?

Andreas Berggren: I started out playing with friends and in poker clubs in Gothenburg. I started playing online during the “golden years of online poker.” Looking back, I was really terrible at poker, but back then you could always find someone worse than you.

PocketFives: Do you plan to keep playing for another decade?

Andreas Berggren: I’ve had many ups and downs in my career and even decided to quit the game seven years ago. I started working some crappy jobs and got so sick of it, so I eventually decided to give poker another go. It was only a six-month break, but it really gave me some perspective. Right now, I’m really enjoy playing again and have no plans to quit in the next two years, but you never now what will happen. Until I figure out a better alternative, I definitely will continue.

PocketFives: What do you do away from poker?

Andreas Berggren: I spend most of my free time with my family. I have two kids and a wonderful girlfriend, so it’s really important for me to be with them as much as I can since I put in a lot of hours of poker every week.

PocketFives: What do your kids think of your poker career?

Andreas Berggren: They are pretty young still at two and four, so I don’t really think they’ve reflected too much about it. But, they get to enjoy the benefits that poker has given me money-wise, plus the fact that I’m home a lot, able to take vacations, and so on. The only part I struggle with still is when I travel and am away from them. I don’t really like being away from my family for that long of a time.

Check out this week’s PocketFives Rankings Update. Congrats to Andreas Berggren on becoming our new #1 ranked player!

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