Six years after he last held the #1 spot in the Online Poker Rankings, Yuri Dzivielevski is at the top once again.

For the first time in six years, Brazilian Yuri ‘Yuri Martins’ Dzivielevski returned to the worldwide #1 ranking in the latest Online Poker Rankings. After months of flirting with the top spot, Dzivielevski finally broke through thanks to his incredible heads-up comeback victory against high-roller tournament savant Michael Addamo in this week’s edition of the GGPoker Super MILLION$.

Dzivielevski is no stranger to racking up rankings points by way of major tournament scores. Back in December 2014, Dzivielevski leveraged his runner-up finish in the PokerStars WCOOP Main Event, for which he earned a career-high payday of $1.2 million, to supplant Fedor ‘CrownUpGuy’ Holz at #1. He held on to the top spot for five weeks back then, thanks to a recent pair of massive results this past week, he’s finally returned.

It was in the first week of February that Dzivielevski finished as the runner-up in the ACR Venom Main Event, earning him $849,150 and 2,026.53 points. This score catapulted the Brazilian into the top 10 and throughout the month of February, he continued to accumulate scores which helped him rise to the #2 spot. Dzivielevski’s performance in February not only set him up to be in a position to take over the rankings, but it also earned him the February Online Player of the Month title.

Throughout March, he continued to keep pace, staying inside the top 10. Last week in the rankings, it looked as if former #1-ranked Bert ‘girafganger7’ Stevens’ most likely challengers were going to be Rui ‘RuiNF’ Ferreira and Russia’s Arsenii ‘hellohellohello’ Malinov, but Dzivielevski proved that he should never be counted out.

That was never more true than it was this week in the GGPoker Super MILLION$. Dzivielevski found himself heads-up against a sun-running Addamo, who held a massive chip lead. However, Dzivielevski showed off why he’s one of the best in the world and when the tide turned in his favor, he ended up capturing his first Super MILLION$ title for $408,406 and 1,421.27 points, which turned out to be just enough to leap three spots and overtake Stevens.

As impressive as the Super MILLION$ win was, that alone would not have been enough to oust Stevens, who had multiple qualifying scores of his own this week. Dzivielevski also picked up a final table finish in the March 22 edition of the Natural8 Sunday 500 High Roller for $33,294 and 255.39 points.

Currently, Dzivielevski sits with 13,726 points, just 114 points ahead of Stevens who fell to #2. Ferreira is the only other player with more than 13,000 points, sitting in third place with 13,370 – trailing by just 356 points. With the elite players at the top so close together in points, the next few weeks – perhaps even months – could see regular changes at the top.

A Top 10 Surprise

Another major factor in the rankings appeared this week when, out of the blue, Portugal’s Andre ‘xunekas23’ Marques appeared in the top 10, coming in at a career-high ranking of #9 in the world.

Marques had been previously ranked, in fact, last week he was #1,400. But after updating his profile with additional screen names, including his well-known alias of ‘PTFisherman23’ he catapulted up the rankings.

Many might recognize Marques’ ‘PTFisherman23’ screen name as the winner of the 2020 PokerStars WCOOP Main Event taking home a career-high score of more than $1.1 million. Since that time, Marques has been on a heater in the high rollers in picking up wins in the PokerStars Blowout Series, GGPoker Sunday Main Event (where he plays under the name ‘Sperma’), and, just this month, the High Rollers Second Chance in which he earned $17,356 and 308.22 points.

Marques’ new ranking also adds a third player from Portugal inside the top 10, as Anatoly ‘nl_profit’ Filatov slips to #11.

Online Poker Rankings Notes This Week

• Russia’s player-to-watch Maskim ‘MAMOHT_T’ Mamonov jumped three spots from #20 to #17 this week thanks to a pair of back-to-back deep runs on GGPoker. First, he took fourth place in the March 22 edition of the $840 High Rollers Marathon for $12,594 and 159.10 points. Then he wrapped up a runner-up finish in the $210 Bounty Hunters Sunday Special for another $16,337 and 294.09 points.

• Former #1-ranked Patrick ‘pleno1’ Leonard had a nice week and jumped up 34 spots from #65 to #31 thanks in part to his fifth-place finish in the GGPoker Sunday High Rollers Main Event where he earned $56,683 and 387.52 PLB points.

• A trio of high-profile players squeaked back into the top 100 this week as former #1 ‘C Darwin2’ jumped 29 spots to land at #97, Hungary’s ‘Wildace_hun’ rose 73 places to #99, and one of Greece’s top pros, Alex ‘mexican222’ Kolonias rocketed 54 spots to the #100 rank.

Worldwide Online Poker Rankings Top 10

RANKPLAYERCOUNTRYPOINTS
1stYuri 'Yuri Martins' DzivieleskiBrazil13,726
2ndBert 'girafganger7' StevensUK13,612
3rdRui 'RuiNF' FerreiraPortugal13,370
4thArsenii 'hellohellohello' MalinovRussia12,992
5thJoao 'Naza114' VieiraPortugal12,134
6thBrunno 'bbotteon' Botteon Brazil11,932
7thMike 'SirWatts' Watson Canada11,700
8thBruno 'brunovolks' VolkmannBrazil11,438
9thAndre 'xunekas23' MarquesPortugal10,774
10thSami 'LarsLuzak' Kelopuro Finland10,613