Roman 'Romeopro' Romanovsky is making his case to take over the #1 spot from longtime rankings king 'lena900'.

Movers & Shakers takes a look into those PocketFives members that have made big moves in the top 100 of the online poker rankings.

There is a lot on the line in this week’s Movers & Shakers. For the first time in a long time, Sweden’s ‘lena900’ is faced with a serious threat to his worldwide #1 ranking.

Along with a pair of tournament crushers cruising up the ranks of the top 10, some notable names have made double-digit jumps up the rankings, plus a Bulgarian pro broke into the top 100 for the first time.

Roman ‘Romeopro’ Romanovsky (#2) and ‘Girafganger7’ (#3)

The column is called Movers & Shakers for a reason, it’s not simply the players who have made the biggest moves inside the top 100, it’s also about those are looking to shake up the rankings.

Regular readers of PocketFives will know the names of Ukranian crusher Roman ‘Romeopro’ Romanovsky and UK, by way of Belgium, superstar ‘Girafganger7’. But if you haven’t been paying close attention you have missed the major strides the pair have been making, almost in tandem, up the ranks of the top 10.

Romanovsky is spending his second week in a row in the #2 position, and now he’s closer than ever to achieving his primary goal of taking over the #1 spot in the world. He trails ‘lena900’ by 357 points, putting him closer to the top spot than any player has been for months.

Romanovsky put together some serious PLB points including a runner-up finish in the partypoker Sunday High Roller Bounty Hunter for $28,616 and 314.65 PLB points, followed by a victory in the PokerStars Big $215 for another $5,700 and 166.73 PLB points. This week he had already recorded a third-place finish in the 888poker $50,000 Whale for $8,850 and he’s been grinding nearly every day to hit that new career high.

Right behind Romanovsky is ‘Girafganger7’ who displaced ‘C Darwin2’ for the worldwide #3 spot. ‘Giraf’ has been the #1 player in the world once, back in 2017, but in a recent interview with PocketFives, he acknowledged that returning to the top of the PocketFives Rankings was, once again, on his mind.

He made major strides in getting back to the top by winning the March 3 edition of the partypoker Sunday High Roller Bounty Hunter for $42,351 and 447.21 PLB points. The very next day he had another top-three finish when he picked up the silver in the partypoker High Roller Bounty Hunter for another $10,446 and 166.99 PLB points. ‘Giraf’ still trails ‘lena900’ by roughly 1000 PLB points, which is a sizable margin, but with the amount of volume ‘Giraf’ has been putting in lately, a couple more large Sunday scores could really close the distance.

DeathbyQuads (#30)

‘DeathbyQuads’ is Sweden’s #5-ranked player and this week he’s jumped up 11 spots to break back into the worldwide top 30. It has been a good few months for ’DeathbyQuads’ as has he recently surpassed more than $5 million in lifetime earnings and he continues to add to that by picking up four four-figure cashes just last week.

He saw a spike in the rankings thanks to three solid PLB scores including a final table finish in the March 3 edition of the PokerStars $215 Sunday Warm-Up for $4,774 and 138.93 PLB points. He followed that up the very next day with an outright victory in the PokerStars Hot $82 for another $3,958 and 148.74.

‘DeathbyQuads’ is a perennial presence in the top 100 and a consistent grinder that has the ability to go on a heater and soar back into top 10 contention.

Diego ‘MrBittar’ Valadares Bittar (#35)

Another well-known name jumping up double-digits in the rankings is Brazilian grinder Diego ‘MrBittar’ Bittar who broke back into the top 50 by moving up 17 spots.

It was a momentous week for Bittar as he, also, just surpassed the $5 million lifetime earnings. On March 10 when he finished in the money in the partypoker Sunday Bounty Hunter where he picked up $1,171 for a 33rd place finish. That was the cash that put him over the top of the major milestone.

In the meantime, he’s been moving in the right direction on the rankings mostly due to a major victory in the March 7 edition of the PokerStars $530 High Roller Club Bounty Builder where he picked up $19,224 and 326.73 PLB points.

Bittar is nearly halfway to his career high ranking of #16 in the world and he sits less than 300 PLB points behind the next nearest Brazilian, that being one of online poker’s all-time greats Joao ‘joaosimaobh’ Simao, who currently sits at #29.

Boris ‘olelemaiko’ Koley (#72)

The largest leap in the rankings this week belongs to Bulgaria’s Boris ‘olelemaiko’ Koley who shot up the rankings 107 spots. The move puts him into the top 100 for the first time and landing him at a career-high ranking of #72.

That kind of shift is usually indicative of a massive score and this is no different for Koley who took down the ACR OSS $1M GTD for a career-high score of $196,741 and 1,098.64 PLB points. It didn’t hurt that on the same day, on the same site, he booked a runner-up finish in the $250,000 Sunday Special adding $36,000 and 354.06 PLB points to his one day total.

The rise in the rankings puts his as the #2-ranked player in his home country and has sent his lifetime total scores north of $1.5 million.