2013 has been pretty blockbuster for eisenhower1. In January, he won the PokerStars Super Tuesday for $112,000 officially, the largest online MTT score we’ve tracked for him by about $15,000. In March, he took down an FTOPS event for $91,000, the third largest score we’ve tracked for him. $200,000 and nearly 1,100 PLB Points later, the Swede has rocketed to the top five of the PocketFives Online Poker Rankings and is closing in on a whopping $4.5 million in tracked scores.

We were tickled to be able to catch up with eisenhower1, who originally joined the site in mid-2006. His profile has been viewed over 7,700 times and so we asked what has been the driving force behind his recent success. He told us, “I have to thank the Swedish tax office for that. All of the top Swedish players got a big hit in November, so I got motivated to win some money. They decided to go back five years and pick up 30% of all winnings from PokerStars, Full Tilt, Absolute Poker, UB, and Bodog and assess a 40% penalty.”

Full Tilt was offline for over a year and eisenhower1, like many other players, jumped back online the first chance they had in order to compete in series like the FTOPS. He explained, “I was really happy that Full Tilt came back, but after two months of playing, I wasn’t that happy anymore. The fields were very hard and mostly consisted of grinders, but FTOPS was obviously fun and the site had a lot more people than usual.”

During his FTOPS jersey run, he took down a major hand with A-K against A-Q and relayed, “After that, I got the chance to put pressure on the other guys and they had to think about ICM and couldn’t play back, so I had a pretty sweet run.”

Late last year, eisenhower1 took down the PartyPoker $200,000 Guaranteed Sundayfor $35,000 and final tabled the PokerStars Sunday $100 Rebuy for another $43,000. We’ve logged eight scores for him that eclipse $50,000.

Let’s talk about his screen name now. Where does eisenhower1 come from and why does his profile on PocketFives feature a shot of the popular President (pictured at top)? Here’s the story: “It comes from a late night in the army. We were up guarding the royal castle and had a quiz. The question was, ‘What was the name of the general called Desert Fox?‘ My mates and I had no clue. I just knew that Eisenhower was a general, so we wrote that down. When our captain went through all of the answers, everybody had changed their responses without telling me. Everyone thought it was funny and so started calling me Eisenhower.”

He is top dog among our nearly 300 ranked members of the Sweden poker community and reached as high as #3 worldwide in the Rankings last month. He has come a long way since getting started in poker while in the army playing late at night. He also caught the World Poker Tour on television and began to migrate into the world of online poker.

When will we see eisenhower1 ranked #1? Is that day coming soon? He confessed, “That would be awesome, but probably won’t happen. My chance might be now. If I stay home and don’t go to Las Vegas and grind while everyone else goes, I might have a chance.” He was #4 in our most recent Rankings update.

Other top-tier scores for eisenhower1 include a win in the Sunday Warm-Up in mid-2008 for $97,000 officially, a final table in the FTOPS Main Event in late 2007 for $90,000, a third place finish in a WCOOP Second Chance event in 2009 for $73,000, and a final table in a Full Tilt tournament in August 2008 for $63,000.

Check out our Rankings landing page for more information. Congrats to eisenhower1 and all of our ranked players.

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