We’re pretty sure this is one of the first, if not the first, interviews we’ve ever done with a poker player from Iceland. After all, the island nation has fewer than 150 registered PocketFives members, so percentage-wise Iceland is a tiny blip on the poker radar. However, in recent weeks, Hrannar Hallgrimsson (pictured), who is known on PocketFives as hrabbi87, final tabled the PokerStars Sunday $100 Rebuy for $25,000. We made that the perfect excuse to interview an Icelandic member.

“I’m happy with the score,” Hallgrimsson told us, “although I must admit I am a bit displeased about not winning the whole thing since I was chip leader with five players left.” The tournament had nearly 850 entrants and passed its $175,000 guarantee by 43%.

The winner was Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Alen lilachaa Bilic, who earned $47,000. Hallgrimsson said of our #52 ranked player worldwide, “He was the only one who fought me at the final table. The others all seemed to be waiting for the next pay jump and I had a relatively easy time running over them until I lost with A-K against A-10 and got my stack down to average. Then, it became harder until lilachaa finally busted me.”

hrabbi87 is up to $109,000 in online tournament scores and his Sunday $100 Rebuy final table is his second career five-figure cash.

Okay, now let’s get down to the meat and potatoes of this interview: poker in Iceland. “Poker in Iceland is not very big,” he said. “Iceland has a small population and there are only a handful of underground poker clubs, but no casinos. Once a year, a tournament called Islandsmot, the Icelandic Championship of Poker, is held at a hotel in Reykjavík where there are generally about 150 entrants.”

He added, “Although the population is small, Iceland still has some good online poker players. In general, I think most people have nothing against poker and there seems to be no prejudice against people who play the game.” The members of the PocketFives Iceland poker community have generated $7.4 million in career online MTT cashes across 29,272 in the money finishes, an average of about $250 each.

Away from poker, Hallgrimsson watches what he called “proper football, not the American thing” and enjoys partying with his friends. We’d guess that quite a bar tab was racked up the day after his Sunday $100 Rebuy score.

How does a person in Iceland get started playing poker? Pretty much the same way as anyone else, it turns out. Hallgrimsson began playing with friends in a garage and soon found online poker. He explained, “I’m not sure exactly it was that made me so excited about the game, but I can only assume it was my fondness of money. I almost exclusively played cash games, but these days I’m getting more and more into tournaments.”

He wanted to congratulate lilachaa for the victory, which he said was “well deserved.” Kudos to him! The Sunday $100 Rebuy runs weekly on PokerStars. If you don’t have a PokerStars account, sign up through the links on PocketFives and get a 100% up to $600 deposit bonus andone free month of PocketFives Training with no signup fee. Click here to create your account.

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