Late last month, rakis6came away with a PocketFives Triple Crown. It wasn’t your ordinary, run-of-the-mill Triple Crown, either. Instead, rakis6 racked up the second most number of PLB Points ever for a Triple Crown at 1,632 and was a mere 130 off the all-time record of 1,762 by mathclub in 2010. The nearly record-breaking Triple Crown in PocketFives history is definitely worthy of a feature article, so we sat down with rakis6 to discuss the award and the brand new badge in his profile.

“I am very pumped about the Triple Crown, being my first one and all,” rakis6 told PocketFives in an exclusive interview. “I haven’t really gunned for a Triple Crown before by adding more tournaments on other sites if I already had two wins.”

The vast majority of his Triple Crown PLB Points – 1,143 to be exact – came from a win in a $1,050 PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker event. The tournament, the 50th on the 2012 WCOOP schedule, fetched a field of 1,300 and first place was officially good for over 1,100 PLB Points as well as the second leg of his Triple Crown.

A three-handed deal was struck in the WCOOP tournament that saw rakis6 walk away with $193,000. He explained, “Living in Finland and it being a two-day tournament were not so great because it started 24:00 at night and ended at 09:00 in the morning Finnish time. We made a deal three-handed for $193,000. It feels amazing, especially since the tournament had tough players at every table and I got a bracelet to remind me of it.”

In most cases, winning the weekly major on 888 Pokerwould be cause enough for a feature article on PocketFives. For rakis6, the 888 Sunday Challenge marked the third and final leg of his Triple Crown and meant another 331 PLB Points. You can see why he recorded the second largest Triple Crown of all-time.

“I already had a close call in an Ongame $50 Turbo where I came in third,” rakis6 told us about logging his final Triple Crown tournament victory. “Later that same night, I managed to scoop the 888 Poker tourney. It wasn’t that tough of a field, but the challenge is to adapt to players on that site. I sucked out pretty ugly three-handed and made some bad plays there, but this week, luck was just on my side.”

He is up to over $1.3 million in tracked online MTT cashes in his profile, a little over half of which has come on PokerStars and PartyPoker. As a result of his recent success, the Fin shot up to #27 worldwide in the PocketFives Poker Player Rankings on October 3. “Everyone was happy for me,” rakis6 said about his recent string of wins. “A couple of my friends who play poker were railing me and they were really pumped when I made the second day of the WCOOP Main Event.”

Oh yeah, the WCOOP Main Event. Did we mention that rakis6 drove deep in the $5,200 buy-in tournament and cashed for $57,000 after a 12th place finish? And that wasn’t even part of his Triple Crown. The WCOOP Main Event spanned two days, the first of which took place on the same day as the 888 Poker Sunday Challenge.

“I don’t really know yet,” rakis6 responded when asked what he plans to do with his newfound cash. “Maybe buy a house or something sensible.” He’d like to take up residence in Finland in a “quiet neighborhood,” although it doesn’t sound like he is very far into the purchasing process. rakis6 banked $351,000 in tracked MTT cashes in September alone.

Our Triple Crown interviewee got started in poker in 2007 and plays the game part-time. When he’s not racking up wins on the felts, he’s studying math at university. We’re pretty sure that his studies invariably lead to more success in poker.

rakis6 closed by saying, “I want to thank PXF, Alex AJKHoosier1Kamberis, and Alex AssassinatoFitzgerald, who have been coaching me. Without them, I couldn’t have done this.” Check out our Triple Crown Wall of Champions to learn how to score your own profile badge.