On the very first day of 2012, poker players took to the felts for the first Sunday Majors of the year. On sites like bwin, the Ongame Network $100,000 Guaranteed was in high gear, as a field of 487 players turned up to create a prize pool that topped $110,000. In the end, Sweden’s Srslyfucame away with the win in the $108 buy-in tournament and banked $21,000. He has rocketed all the way up to #631 worldwide in the Sliding PLB and is #6 in his home country.

Srslyfu candidly told PocketFives that he was elated to come away with a Sunday Major victory: “I’m feeling great. It has been a lot of rough Sundays lately, so a big win was well needed and extremely nice!” Previously, one of Srslyfu’s big claims to fame was a runner-up finish in the Titan Poker $200,000 Guaranteedfor $23,000 in late July of last year. He also recorded a Sunday Major win at PartyPoker, where he took down the site’s $250,000 Guaranteed in December 2010 for $43,000.

We asked Srslyfu to compare his Ongame victory to some of the other marquee cashes he’s had over the course of his poker career. He responded, “I think this tournament has a tougher field than other tournaments I had deep runs in. And the games always get tougher every month.”

Besides the tougher field, Srslyfu spoke volumes about the structure of the Ongame Network’s $100,000 Guaranteed: “The structure is quite good. I had a pretty massive chip lead and had some room for 3-4 bet folds.” He was able to open up a lot more pots and put pressure on other stacks throughout the tournament. The tournament can be found in the bwin lobby on Sundays at 21:00 GMT+1 and entrants get 2,500 in starting chips. There are optional $100 rebuys and add-ons.

Also at the final table of the tournament was Australia’s Matt mjw006Wakeman (pictured), who jumped two spots in the PocketFives Poker Rankingsthis week from #9 worldwide to #7. Supporting his ranking is mjw006’s #5 position in the PocketFives Sliding PLB. For his third place finish in the Ongame Network’s $100,000 Guaranteed, mjw006, who plays as MacGruBer006on bwin, banked $10,000.

Here’s how the top 10 finishers in the January 1st running of the Ongame Network’s $100,000 Guaranteed cashed out:

1. 1Srslyfu $21,914.51 (Srslyfu)
2. PMUFTW $15,113.01
3. MacGruBer006 $10,794.83 (mjw006)
4. boristhemdog $7,995.75
5. 4321123456 $5,923.02
6. YoungWall $4,387.02
7. BetfFairy $3,549.36
8. StThomas7 $2,799.09
9. harwell2 $2,177.85
10. Don Cool $1,700.48

In our PocketFives Country Poker Rankings, Sweden is #21 worldwide. The leaderboard is ordered by the combined PLB totals of the top 20 players in a country, and Sweden has logged 44,873 points. Moreover, players from Sweden have a total of 11 Triple Crowns. On the state of poker in his homeland, Srslyfu told PocketFives, “The game has been quite respected in Sweden by the general public, but it’s not as big as it is in places like the U.S. There are a lot of Swedish online MTT pros that I regularly grind with and respect.”

Here are the top 10 players on the Swedish Sliding PLB along with the number of PLB points they’ve accumulated:

1. KungKroon – 4,350.90 (pictured)
2. inhoo – 4,225.81
3. thegrinders7 – 3,066.39
4. Bjolle – 2,952.67
5. Code.exe – 2,940.08
6. Srslyfu – 2,591.51
7. Lyktstolpe – 2,588.61
8. RIPCURL – 2,544.17
9. deemer6 – 2,466.84
10. felghen – 2,031.88

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