Sweden continued its attack on the upper reaches of the PocketFives Online Poker Rankingsthis week, claiming three of the top four spots worldwide. Holding down the fort at #3 worldwide and #2 in Sweden is Sheater, who took down the Winamax Grand Tournament over the weekend, a $1,311 buy-in tournament, for a cool $45,000.

“It feels great,” Sheater told PocketFives in an exclusive interview following his Sunday Major victory. “Last Sunday was about to turn into a really bad day. I final table bubbled a couple of tournaments and lost some big stacks. At the same time, my internet went down and my backup internet didn’t work. The connection was unstable, but I had this tournament left with a really good stack.”

Despite the tech issues, Sheater stayed connected and continued navigating the 123-man field, but not without a few setbacks. He narrated, “I lost K-K to K-T offsuit for the chip lead with around 12 left. At that point, I was pretty tilted and was one of the shortest stacks left. I managed to get back into it and ran really well after that, though. I won A-T to A-Q with four left versus fellow PocketFiver Ariados for a big pot. Then, I knocked out the aggressive chip leader with A-A versus A-Q on a board of 2-3-5-Q-X. After that, I was chip leader again and managed to hold it all the way.”

As a result of the score, Sheater has over $60,000 in tracked scores on Winamax, which accepts EU players, and $4.5 million overall. Nearly half of the latter total has come on PokerStars, where he plays under the user name gnetaren.

“I probably don’t celebrate scores enough,” Sheater responded when asked if and how he enjoys big wins. “I just bought a new bed for myself, though. For this score, I haven’t celebrated yet. I like to play on Monday and Tuesday, so I had to wait a few days to do anything.”

Sheater was ranked #1 in the world on PocketFives starting on Christmas and stretching for four weeks. His profile has over 25,000 views, one of the highest counts of anyone, and he told us what it means to have been the top-ranked player: “It felt great to be at the top for some time, especially for my confidence in my game. I think it depends a lot on how much volume you put in and whether you manage to get first or second in a tournament instead of fifth or sixth, which I was fortunate to do for some time there.”

He added, “Some top players don’t play as much volume as I have been, but when they do they rise, they do so pretty fast in the Rankings.”

Sweden overtook Canadafor the top spot in the PocketFives Country Poker Rankingslast month and an incredible 11 Swedes are in the top 50 worldwide on PocketFives. Is there something in the water in the Sweden poker community? “It’s tax-free on PokerStars for Swedish players now, so the best players play a lot more volume than before and more top Swedish players have created a PocketFives account,” Sheater said. “It has also been winter in Sweden (pictured), which is a good time to be indoors playing poker.” Today’s high in Stockholm: 39 degrees Fahrenheit.

One of Sheater’s biggest claims to fame came last May, when he final tabled two PokerStars SCOOP events for a combined score of over $170,000 officially. Last November, he took down the Full Tilt Sunday Brawl for $52,000. If you’re wondering, his $45,000 effort in the Winamax Grand Tournament represents his fifth largest score to date.

If you don’t already have a Winamax account but have an EU bank account, you can sign up through the links on PocketFives and make a deposit to get one free month of PocketFives Training with no sign-up fee and be tracked for our exclusive March PLB competition on Winamaxthat awards €1,100 in tickets! Get started here.

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