With Pennsylvania on the verge of going live with online poker, it’s time to get prepared for how you can become one of the top online poker players in the state.

The PocketFives Rankings are the standard by which online poker players are measured. The rankings have the ability to be filtered in order to display specific leaderboards for a state or region. The more states that legalize online poker in the U.S., the more opportunity there is for players to challenge other members within the community to become the top-ranked player in the state. State rankings in Nevada and New Jersey are great examples of this, and Pennsylvania is next.

Here is how you can best position yourself to become one of the top-ranked online poker players in Pennsylvania.

1. Sign Up for a PocketFives Account

The first step to getting ranked is to sign up for a PocketFives account. It’s free to do and only takes a minute of your time. You’ll need a valid email address to do so, but everyone’s got one of those, right?

After you click the sign-up button and enter the required information, you’ll need to confirm your email address. Locate the validation email sent by PocketFives to the email you used, open it, and click the validate link. Your email should then be verified and your PocketFives profile created.

2. Add Your PA Online Poker Screen Names

Once your PocketFives account is created, go to your profile. You’ll see a status bar that tells you the next step for setting up your profile. At this time, you’ll want to start adding your PA online poker screen names that you have registered with sites in the state.

Click ‘Edit Poker Names’ in the upper right portion of your profile to begin adding screen names. Select the poker site from the dropdown menu and then input your online poker screen name. Click ‘Create New’ to add it and you’ll see the screen name populate in the table below. You may repeat this process for multiple poker sites.

Now, in order to get ranked, you’ll need to make sure that the ‘Exclude Rankings’ box in the right column is unchecked. This is very important. If you tick this box, you will exclude yourself from being ranked and that will serve as a roadblock to becoming one of the top-ranked PA online poker players.

3. Start Playing To Earn Leaderboard Points

With your account created and online poker screen names added to your profile, the next step is to start playing online poker in Pennsylvania. Keep in mind that the PocketFives Online Poker Rankings are for scheduled multi-table tournaments only, not cash games, SNGs, or satellites.

For regulated U.S. poker sites, such as the ones that will be made available in Pennsylvania, there are a few requirements that need to be met in order for a specific tournament to get ranked. A tournament must have a minimum of 20 entrants, a prize pool of at least $100, and a buy-in of at least $0.01. Those requirements are fairly easy to be met but worth understanding.

The way the PocketFives Leaderboard Formula works is that it takes into account the tournament prize pool and a player’s finishing position. The larger the prize pool and the deep the finish, the more points that will be earned. Keep this in mind when selecting the tournaments you wish to play in order to improve your ranking. It’s especially important to compete in any major tournament series that PA online poker sites may be running, so stay on the lookout for those.

A description of the components of the PocketFives Leaderboard Formula and how the formula was chosen can be found by reading the PocketFives Leaderboard Formula FAQ.

4. Earn a PocketFives Triple Crown

A great way to increase one’s ranking is by winning tournaments. You can also increase your standing within the Pennsylvania online poker community by racking up PocketFives Triple Crown badges from the state’s regulated online poker sites.

The PocketFives Triple Crown is one of the most celebrated accomplishments in online poker. In order to earn a P5s Triple Crown, a player must win three different tournaments on three different poker networks over the course of any seven-day period. A few requirements must be met, as outlined below.

• A player must win three multi-table tournaments, each of which starts within the same seven-day period across any three of the networks tracked on PocketFives
• Each tournament must have a prize pool of at least $10,000
• Each tournament must have at least 100 players
• Each tournament must have a buy-in of at least $0.01
• Wins must be verified by the PocketFives.com staff from data collected from the sites themselves

Remember that SNGs and satellite tournaments do not count.

With Pennsylvania being a new market for online poker, the race to accumulate Triple Crown badges is still very young. Someone is going to need to be the first to achieve it and someone is going to be the all-time leader in Pennsylvania Triple Crown badges – why can’t it be you?

5. Collect More Badges

PocketFives is much more than just rankings. It’s an entire community of poker players. One of the ways the community can recognize the achievements of one another is through the badges that can be earned by players and displayed on their profile. We already discussed what it takes to earn a PocketFives Triple Crown badge, but there’s plenty more that can be had. Again, with Pennsylvania’s regulated online poker market being new, the race for badges is only beginning.

Other badges that PA online poker players can strive to earn are the Monthly PLB badge, the $100K badge, and the $250K badge.

The PocketFives Monthly PLB is a recurring monthly tournament leaderboard exclusively for PocketFivers. The points are calculated using the PocketFives PLB points formula and the leaderboard includes each P5er’s top 20 scores. Topping the leaderboard will earn a player a Monthly PLB badge.

The $100K badge recognizes PocketFivers who have cashed for a total of at least $100,000 in rankings-eligible tournaments since the inception of the automated PocketFives rankings system.

Like the $100K badge, the $250K badge recognizes PocketFivers who have cashed for a total of at least $250,000 in rankings-eligible tournaments since the inception of the automated PocketFives rankings system.

These three badges will be the most attainable at the start for new Pennsylvania players, but there are several other badges that can be earned, too. For details on all of the different PocketFives badges that can be earned, check out the Badges dropdown menu at the top of the website.

There you have it. Those are the steps to becoming one of the top-ranked PA online poker players. Have fun and best of luck at the tables!