“It’s getting more and more accepted as a profession,” Sweden’s Srslyfu said about poker in his home country. “But, I think the biggest Swedish newspapers are trashing its reputation and giving the wrong picture to people who don’t know anything about poker.” It seems, at least in one country, that the media can go quite far in determining how the general public views poker.

We got into a discussion of the media at the tail end of a sit-down interview with Srslyfu, who recently finished third in the PokerStars Sunday $100 Rebuyfor $43,000. We asked him to elaborate on how some of the local Swedish newspapers may have thrown poker under the bus: “I think the poker media is good for us. But, the biggest Swedish media outlets are exaggerating everything and using ridiculous headlines. It’s black or white, never something in between, if you know what I mean. They are giving the wrong picture of poker.”

Srslyfu is the top ranked PocketFives member in Sweden and currently sits at #20 worldwide in our Poker Player Rankings, one off his all-time best mark. His $43,000 cash in the Sunday $100 Rebuy on the world’s largest online poker site certainly helped. He told us, “We didn’t chop. Two out of the three of us wanted to take a look at the numbers, but one didn’t. At the same time, I had a twice the chips of the other two players at the table, and two all-ins later, I was out.” That’s a brutal way to go.

He bluntly said, “That pretty much sucked with the big pay jumps and all. I was pretty mad and, of course, the guy who declined to chop won the two all-ins and busted me.” In the end, PocketFivers finished in the top five of that week’s Sunday $100 Rebuy, with danceofthefdead(pictured) grabbing first place for $79,000 and derrickrose25 taking second place for $57,000.

As we said, the Sweden pokercommunity member is at #20 worldwide and knocking on the door of the top 10. However, is a trip to the upper echelons of the Rankings possible, or just wishful thinking? “I don’t think it’s possible at the moment,” Srslyfu admitted. “There are guys who are truly beasts and I don’t think I’m good enough to overtake them yet, but making the top 10 is definitely a goal.”

Srslyfu was recently ranked around #300 before making a charge. The PocketFives Rankings are based wholly on a person’s Sliding PLB score, which is derived from online MTT scores. Accordingly, Srslyfu remarked that he started playing quite a bit on PokerStars and ran pretty well. “As a result, I started to climb fast in the Rankings,” he told us.

Two years ago, he picked up and moved to a larger city in Sweden, Gothenburg. The change of scenery helped bring his game to a much higher level: “I had a few online friends there who played at a very serious level. They have helped me a lot and I have learned a lot from them. It was a lot of hard work in front of the computer while grinding, but that helped me talk with other good poker players.”

He has a Sliding PLB score of 6,400 and has generated over $1.1 million in tracked cashes, about half of which have come on PokerStars. He first signed up for a PocketFives account in 2010 and plays on PokerStars under the screen name BigMeech99. Outside of poker, Srslyfu enjoys hanging out with friends, traveling, and partying. “The usual stuff,” he joked.

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