PocketFives Rankings: Artem 'veeea' Vezhenkov Maintains #1 Ranking
Every streak starts somewhere, whether it’s two complete passes in a row or two consecutive days without an accident on the job. For Artem ‘veeea‘ Vezhenkov, Wednesday marked his second week in a row at #1 in the PocketFives Rankings.
Vezhenkov has 7,124 PLB Points, the metric used to determine the rankings, almost 100 more than the next closest player, ‘eisenhower1‘. With so few points separating the top of the leaderboard, however, it remains to be seen whether Vezhenkov will be able to keep the streak alive next week.
For now, the top spot is Vezhenkov’s to lose. He is also just a few thousand dollars shy of hitting $5 million in career online tournament cashes and finished sixth in the PokerStars Super Tuesday this week for $27,000 and 274 PLB Points. He has racked up seven wins and 26 top-ten finishes this month.
Meanwhile, ‘eisenhower1’ is approaching $8 million in career online MTT winnings and has 7,031 PLB Points, good for second in the world. He has two wins and 13 top-ten finishes so far in January and enjoyed a 16-week stint at #1 before Vezhenkov bucked him from the top spot last week. You can find him on PartyPoker under the user name ‘FergieTime5‘ and he is the top-ranked player in Sweden.
Another Swede, ‘lena900‘, made waves this week after moving up from #8 in the world to #5, three spots off his all-time high. He has seven wins in January, the largest of which was worth $13,000 and came via a victory in a W Series event on Winamax. The same day, he took second in the PartyPoker High Roller for another $6,900. He plays as ‘whoozz‘ on Full Tilt and ‘tutten7‘ on 888.
Outside the top ten, England’s ‘woody1234321‘ moved up from #39 to #13, his highest ranking ever. He won a TCOOP $215 No Limit Hold’em Turbo over the weekend for $118,000 and almost 900 PLB Points, helping him catapult up the rankings. ‘woody1234321’ is the top-ranked player from the UK and is closing in on $3 million in lifetime winnings.
Helio ‘hneves182‘ Neveshad the largest rankings increase inside the top 100, moving from #98 to #23. The Brazilian won the PokerStars $22 No Limit Hold’em Cubed for $7,000 just a few days after taking down the opening TCOOP event for $111,000 and 1,224 PLB Points. This is the highest Neves has ever been ranked and he is the top dog in Brazil. Check out a recent interview with the 23rd-ranked player here.
“It feels pretty cool,” Neves said on Wednesday. “I was, for a long time, purely a heads-up sit and go player and always wanted to move up the Sharkscope leaderboards. Now, only eight months into playing MTTs seriously, I feel like it’s far beyond what I thought I’d be realistically able to accomplish in such a short period of time.”
After reentering his screen names, Norway’s ‘prebzzz‘ reentered the top 100 at #37. This former #3 ranked player finished second in the PokerStars Big $162 a week ago for $15,000 and has 2,360 tracked in the money finishes for a total of $2.7 million. ‘prebzzz’ is the top-ranked PocketFiver from Norway.
Finally, after joining PocketFives last week, Canada’s ‘roo_400‘ debuted at #42. He has $3.7 million in career online winnings and final tabled the PartyPoker High Roller last week for $14,000. He took second in the same tournament in late December under the user name ‘ipuntstacks2‘.
Here are the top 10 players in the rankings this week along with the PLB score for each:
