There’s a new sheriff in town. Mike telksTelker (pictured) ascended to #1 in the PocketFives Online Poker Rankingsthis week. He rose three spots in Wednesday’s Rankings release and owns the fourth best Pro Polltally and PLB score in the land. It’s a big achievement for the Triple Crown winner and world traveler whose volume has remained relatively limited. We managed to hunt him down to congratulate him on his latest achievement. Remember, to this point, Telker had been ranked no higher than #3 worldwide.

“It’s pretty cool,” was Telker’s top-of-mind reaction to the news that he had reached the summit of the PocketFives Rankings. “It never was a goal of mine or anything, but it’s still something I’m proud of.” His November tracked scores include a $9,700 haul for taking second in the PokerStars $109 Cubed and a $2,500 cash for driving deep in the Super Tuesday.

How has he managed to rocket up the Rankings despite a lower output? We asked Telker that very question and he responded, “I put in a lot of volume all of WCOOP and once that was over, it was time to travel and play some EPTs and WSOPE. At a few of the stops such as France and Italy, you can’t play on PokerStars anymore, so I was playing mostly on Sundays along with some random other days. A few of us would go to the nearest country, put in a session, and come back. I’ve been back in the United States since November 21st, so I haven’t played tournaments in a couple of weeks.”

While in the United States, where he’s unable to play on sites like PokerStars and PartyPoker, Telker has a plan: “I’m going to make the journey to Canada for the next two Sundays.” By the way, you can permanently relocate to a poker-friendly country by using our Poker Refugees service.

Telker noted that he landed in the #1 spot because “there aren’t really that many big tournaments online right now other than Sundays and the $1K on Tuesdays, so I wasn’t really missing out on much action to get the big scores. I think I was definitely way more excited to play every time I was playing since it was only once or twice a week. Plus, I knew I was going to be back in the United States for the holidays and really wanted to make the most of every session. Obviously running good helps too.”

In September, Telker claimed a PokerStars WCOOP bracelet in a $1,050 No Limit Hold’em tournament for $350,000. He also final tabled two FTOPS events within two days of each other in February for over $450,000 total, which included a jersey in a $1,000 contest. As a result, he recently passed $3.25 million in tracked online poker earnings.

Only 10 players can hold down a spot in the top 10 of the Rankings, so we asked Telker what player on the outside looking in should be part of the exclusive group: “I’d say paulgees81 (pictured), but it’s a pretty tough choice between most of the guys who are close. He just seems to crush anything he decides to play.” paulgees81 is ranked 14th worldwide and was recently as high as #1 back in April.

In the Poker Community forum, a thread by The Lab Rat (pictured) popped up congratulating Telker on his latest superlative. About 50 responses followed: “That was probably my favorite part. Even though it shouldn’t matter what other people think, it still feels really good seeing all of the nice things people had to say.” Seven top-50 players responded in the thread, all paying their respects to the new top dog.

Telker is now off to the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in the Bahamas and the Aussie Millions in Melbourne. After that, the sky’s the limit: “I’m still deciding what’s going to be next after that. I’m sure it will involve online poker though.”

There was no movement in the top 10 of the PocketFives Country Rankings this week, as Canada continued its impressive stint at #1. The leaderboard displays, and is ordered by, the combined PLB score of the top 20 players in each country. Canada is the lone nation over the 100,000-point plateau and clocks in at 102,000. The United Kingdom and Australia are second and third, respectively, in the Country Rankings, with the U.S. landing in fourth.

Don’t forget that you can also view a list of all former #1 players.