The PocketFives Online Poker Rankingswere recalculated on Wednesday and for the eighth time this year, we have a new #1 ranked player. This week, it’s Griffin Flush_Entity Benger (pictured), who has been on a tear as of late and assumes the #1 spot for the first time since mid-2012. We caught up with Benger shortly after the Rankings were released. Here are the top 10 players this week along with the PLB score for each:

1. Flush_Entity – 7,853 points
2. VnilaVader – 7,552 points
3. lukethafluke – 7,304 points
4. moorman1 – 7,221 points
5. r4ndomr4gs – 7,217 points
6. Sheater – 7,137 points
7. huiiiiiiiiii – 7,083 points
8. blanconegro – 7,017 points
9. lena900 – 6,828 points
10. Yaya24 – 6,816 points

PocketFives: Congrats! Tell us how you’re feeling about being back at #1 in the world.

Griffin Benger: I knew it was a matter of time with the heater I’ve been on recently and figured after my Hot $55 win on Sunday, this would be the week it happened. I stayed up a bit last night to wait for the Rankings to change. It’s hard not to get a good night’s sleep after you find out you’re #1 at anything, let alone something as competitive as poker.

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PocketFives: Do the Rankings mean a lot to you? Are they a motivator or how do they affect your mindset while playing?

Griffin Benger: PocketFives has always been an incredible tool for me to track my progress, compare my success to my peers, and give me goals outside of just making money. It can get a bit monotonous to play MTT poker day after day trying to make money. It’s fun when you see you’re in contention for a Monthly or Yearly PLB or need one more win for a PocketFives Triple Crown.

Dan Cypra: What do you attribute your recent success to? You’ve had a PokerStarsSunday 500 win, Sunday Supersonic final table, and Super Tuesday final table in the last few months, just to name a few key scores.

Griffin Benger: I’ve been very fortunate in the sense that if I have ever felt like I might be hitting a bit of a lull in my game, I’m exposed to someone who’s having a lot of success at the time who has been able to help me get to the next level. First it was Shyam s_dot111Srinivasan, then Calvin cal42688Anderson (pictured), then Paul paulgees81Volpe, then Simon pokerbrat13Charette, then Evan Jarvis of Gripsed.com, and most recently I attribute a great deal of my success to working with Connor blanconegro Drinan.

Connor and I spent nearly a month-and-a-half together in Europe and were constantly grinding together and bouncing ideas off each other about different ways to approach hands and spots. It has done wonders for my game.

It’s really important to have a broad network of friends and colleagues in poker. Even if you might be considered better than a certain player, they are definitely doing something better than you, and if you’re not going out of your way to find out what that is and then implementing it into your game, you’re just being lazy.

Laziness is the biggest problem in online MTT culture. We have so many tools out there to be successful, but people would rather moan and groan about how badly they run than work harder. The game is constantly evolving and becoming more challenging. If you’re not evolving with it, you’re either being lazy or don’t want it as badly as I do.

PocketFives: You’re still with Phil Ivey’s training site, right?

Griffin Benger: Yes, I am. I share a great deal of insight in my first training video series of my Sunday 500 final table at IveyLeague.com. I genuinely feel the Masters membership is worth the money.

Congrats to all of our ranked players this week!

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