Recently, a thread in Poker Discussion popped up entitled “Absolute Sickness.” The two-word phrase accurately described a two-week run by U.K. PocketFives.com member Sam TheSquidGrafton (pictured), who is one of only a handful of players ever to capture back-to-back PocketFives Triple Crowns. Cyprus online poker player Nicodemos reallygamble Protopapas, who created the thread, lauded, “This boy is definitely one of the hottest MTT players in the world right now. The consistency in his results since he started playing online MTTs, basically nine months ago, is absolutely sick!”

The first Triple Crown featured Grafton taking down the Cake Poker$12,500 Guaranteed, Full Tilt Poker$50 Cubed, and PartyPoker$10,000 Guaranteed. The three wins combined for just over $11,000 and marked his very first Triple Crown on PocketFives.com. He wasn’t done there, however. In fact, Grafton was just warming up. He promptly went on to win the PokerStars$20,000 Guaranteed, PartyPoker $12,000 Guaranteed Speed, and Full Tilt Poker $17,500 KO Guaranteed within the same seven-day period for Triple Crown #2.

How did he ramp up in such a short amount of time after only playing online since November? Grafton revealed, “I’ve been really hard on myself. I’m always reviewing, looking for leaks, and never just accepting that I got unlucky. I am nowhere near a finished product, though, compared to some of the online monsters. I still have a long way to go, but it has been exciting so far.”

Out of his six high-stakes online poker scores that counted for the dual Triple Crowns, Grafton boasted that the Full Tilt Poker $17,500 KO Guaranteed was his most memorable. Why, you ask? “After the sick two weeks, I felt super confident for the first time. I went to the final table and felt I knew exactly what was required. I was very in the zone. My first Triple Crown was so hard and I thought I wouldn’t do it at some points. The second one came really easily. I felt really in tune and by the time I won that $17,500 Guaranteed, I realized I had done something pretty cool.” In March, Grafton lodged his largest online poker score to date after winning the PokerStars $11 Rebuy for $10,000.

The congratulatory comments poured in and Grafton was elated to see such a positive reaction by the online poker community: “I come from a very tight community of poker players. They are all very supportive and, believe me, all very good. I’m sure that some of the players in London who aren’t known right now will build a name for themselves over the next year.” Grafton is in 24th in the Sortable Rankings for the U.K. at the time of writing and first overall in London.

The full-time online poker player is now camped out in Las Vegas for the 2010 World Series of Poker (WSOP). He’s looking to play in two No Limit Hold’em tournaments, but admits that he’s under-rolled for the $10,000 buy-in Main Event. His situation now is a far cry from the lay of the land a year and a half ago, when he was working an unpaid internship and grinding live cash games in London to pay his rent. In September, Grafton inked a sponsorship with Gutshot Poker, a Cake Poker Network skin, and has been on the rise ever since: “I want to give props to Gutshot for supporting me at the time.”

Among those who have had a profound influence on his game are India LuckySpecialStorrar, joejoe1337, and Richard rjmgraceGrace. He also wanted to lend shout outs to Protopapas, z1mm3rm8n, and Marc railtard1Wright (pictured), whom he predicted “will be beasts in the future.”

Is a Triple Crown in your future? Visit the Triple Crown Wall of Champions to view the requirements.