Joao Vieira is one of three players to reach a career-high ranking inside the top 20 this week.

It’s another week atop the Online Poker Rankings for Brazilian Yuri ‘Yuri Martins’ Dzivielevski as he enters his ninth week as the #1 ranked online poker player in the world.

While Dzivielevski is in his third stint as the top-ranked player, there’s a trio of players in the top 20 this week who have yet to reach the pinnacle of online poker but are enjoying career-high rankings in an effort to get to the top for the very first time.

With all that he’s accomplished in the game of poker, both online and live, one might assume that current All-Time Online Money List leader Joao ‘Naza114’ Vieira would have the title of worldwide #1 already etched on his resume. However, this week Vieira jumped up three spots in the rankings and landed at #3 in the world, the highest of his career.

Vieira has been adding to his more than $24 million in career earnings over the past month with impressive six-figure scores including a victory in partypoker POWERFEST Event #28 ($1M GTD Super High Roller) for $249,791 and a deep run in the GGPoker $25,500 Sunday Millions where he picked up $170,937 and 645.17 points.

But after a slow start in May, Vieira found his stride by winning partypoker’s World Poker Tour Online Event #12 (Omaha High Roller) for $70,958 and grabbing the bronze in the WPT Online Super High Roller for another $152,768. While that helped his bottom line, his ranking this week was bolstered by his seventh-place finish in the May 25 edition of the GGPoker Super MILLION$ for which he earned another $79,187 but more importantly, 396 leaderboard points.

Vieira has never hidden the fact that he’s aiming to be the best and his latest rankings boost has put him closer than ever to #1. He finished the week with 15,094 points, just 608 behind Sami ‘LarsLuzak’ Kelopura who sits in second place and 1,236 points behind Dzivielevski. In order to close a gap that wide in short order, Vieira is going to need some big-time results in larger field tournaments. Luckily for him, it’s something he’s quite familiar with.

Joining Vieira at a career-high rank inside the top 5 is Brazil’s Bruno ‘brunovolks’ Volkmann. Volkmann weighs in at #4 this week, just 6 points behind Vieira.

On May 18, Volkmann finished in 18th place in the GGPoker Super MILLION$ picking up $61,587 and 362.11 points. But the real boost to his rankings came when he and Elio Fox managed to chop the May 25 edition of the Super MILLION$. The payout for Volkmann, who was crowned the week’s winner, was listed at $319,830 however the details of the deal remain between Volkmann and Fox. But as the official winner, Volkmann earned 1,272.79 points which put considerable distance between him and Mike ‘SirWatts’ Watson, who is slotted at #5 with 13,928 points.

Thanks to his pair of back-to-back deep runs in the GGPoker Super MILLION$, Volkmann surged over 15,000 points (15,088) and has put himself in a position to not only eclipse Vieira next week but make a run at #1 should he find a way to score another major victory.

Volkmann’s countryman, Dalton ‘daltonhb’ Hobold is also climbing the rankings, settling in at his career-high mark of #15 in the world.

Hobold has been on the grind, seen putting in time on every major site this week and racking up three key results. His first score was a third-place finish in the PokerStars SCOOP Afterparty Event #58 High ($530 NLHE, 8-Max) for $33,415 and 312.94 points.

The next day Hobold made a final table appearance in the GGPoker WSOP Circuit $1,050 High Roller Super Tuesday for $8,550 and 147.58 points. Just days later he was back at a WSOPC Series final table, finishing as the runner-up in the $400 Sunday Forty Stack High Roller for $17,035 and 218.98 points.

Hobold’s efforts pushed him up to 10,660 points, up four places in the rankings and into Brazil’s current top 5. Hobold rests just 64 points behind Maksim ‘MAMOHT_T’ Mamonov who sits at #14. However, it’s more likely that Hobold has his sights set on cracking the top 10, and to reach that he’d need to find a way to bridge the 1,369 point gap between himself and Damian ‘tritu’ Salas who occupies the #10 spot this week.

Online Poker Rankings Notes This Week

• High-roller Alexandros ‘mexican222’ Kolonias shot up 32 spots in the rankings to hit his career-high rank of #35 this week and sits less than $14,000 away from eclipsing the $6 million career online earnings mark.

• Former #1-ranked pro from Sweden Andreas ‘r4ndomr4gs’ Berggren also saw a surge in his rank this week, leaping up 43 spots to #55 after picking up a win in the PokerStars High Roller Club $530 Bounty Builder for more than $32,000 and 478.80 points.

• Spain’s top online pro Juanki ‘juanki9605’ Vecino had a big week on GGPoker which resulted in four leaderboard qualifying cashes. His scores included three final tables in the current WSOP Circuit Series for a total of more than $33,000 and landed him at a career-high rank of #68.

Worldwide Online Poker Rankings

RANKPLAYERPOINTS
1st16,330
2nd15,702
3rd15,094
4th15,088
5th13,928
6th13,734
7th13,600
8th13,218
9th12,875
10th12,029