There are nearly 1,000 registered PocketFives.com members in Australia. The country, which is among the most popular for visitors to the online poker community, currently boasts Andrew higher wattageWatson (pictured) at #5 in its Sortable Rankings. Watson is tops in his hometown of Wollongong, owns a pair of PocketFives.com Triple Crowns, and can be found at #59 in the Online Poker Rankings. Needless to say, his profile badges are quickly adding up.

In mid-May, Watson recorded his second Triple Crown, which requires players to win three $10,000 prize pool tournaments across three sites tracked for the Rankings in the same seven-day period. As an old PocketFives.com Podcastcommercial used to say, “If you think it sounds difficult, you are right.” Without Full Tilt Poker, which was recently conditionally sold and still remains idle, getting a Triple Crown is even more challenging.

On how his second Triple Crown compared to his first, Watson told us, “I’ve had the full tournament experience since then. That one was during a real heater. I then cooled off, had a five-month breakeven stretch, got backed in December, really started working on my game again, and had some close calls in some big fields. The second Triple Crown came about as a result of grinding a lot.”

A win in the PokerStars $50,000 Guaranteedserved as the highlight of his most recent Triple Crown and was good for $14,000. He explained, “It feels good to get an outright win in something that’s near the top of your buy-in range. It was also my second biggest online score ever.” His largest tracked score on PocketFives.com is a win in the PokerStars $22 Cubed for $17,000 which came 17 months ago.

Watson admitted that Black Friday, while catastrophic for online poker players in the United States, softened tables for the rest of the world: “Since Black Friday, the games have been really good for us non-U.S. grinders, so I have a great incentive to grind. My ABI has increased by about 50%, but I still feel like my schedule is geared towards value. I play fairly decent volume and have also been playing across more sites looking for value.” He is just $80,000 shy of scoring a $1 million cash badge on our site.

On why he perceives the games to be a bit softer since mid-April, Watson explained, “I think when it first happened, people were more worried about cashouts and getting their money than grinding, so there was a lot of overlay and not many regulars. I think the games are moving back towards where they were and I have been seeing a lot more familiar faces. Plus, in terms of variance, it has been great due to the smaller fields.”

In September, Watson peaked at #40 in the PocketFives.com Rankings, but cautioned that cracking the top 10 isn’t priority #1: “I think I still need to work on my game somewhat. Part of the problem with my schedule is that I have a lot of tables up at peak times, so it makes it harder to concentrate if you were playing some of the toughest stuff.” Three weeks ago, he took down the PokerStars $55 Rebuy for $5,800.

On the live circuit, Watson finished second in a PokerStars Australia New Zealand Poker Tour‘s (ANZPT) stop in Queenstown in July 2010 for $40,00. The Main Event attracted 119 players and Watson fell heads-up to fellow Aussie Julian Cohen in it. He followed that up with a seventh place finish in the ANZPT’s Main Event in Canberra in June 2011 for $13,000.

He wanted to lend shout outs to Sydney’s bazooka87, Dubbo’s Bradley BaZa88Bower and brownie682, and cptwingrave. Congratulations to Watson on his recent online poker success.