Through sheer force of will and a non-stop dedication to the online grinder that Russia’s Aleksandr ‘draxalen’ Shepel captured the top spot of the Online Player of the Month leaderboard for the month of November.

It’s the first Online Player of the Month title for Shepel (3,268 points) who put in an incredible amount of volume to simply outwork the competition. He recorded an incredible 236 in-the-money finishes for a total haul of $485,286 in earnings, mostly by playing in the mid-stakes.

However, Shepel made the most of his opportunities when he was able to play higher and that included a deep run in GGPoker’s weekly Super MILLION$. The Russian fought his way to a third-place finish in the November 9 edition of the $10K tournament to earn a career-high score of $177,595 and 598.80 leaderboard points.

He also managed to pick up five more five-figure scores which helped put him in the top spot – all of which came in a 72-hour window. On November 21, he took the bronze in the GGPoker $1,050 High Roller Main Event for $14,307 and followed it up the very next day with a win in a PokerKing PKO for another $25,910 and 290.34 points. He wasn’t finished, that same day he took down the GGPoker $525 High Roller Wrap-Up for another $13,433 and 240.83 points.

While those big-time scores get him the boost he needed, it was really his consistency in the mid-stakes that built him the base. Of his qualifying scores there were 18 of 100 points or more with 19 scores of four figures or more. The side result of his career-high cash and consistency is a new all-time high ranking of #48 in the world.

For Shepel, perhaps just as impressive as winning the Online Player of the Month is who Shepel had to deny in order to do it. Brazil’s Lucio ‘Llima92’ Lima (3,045 points) has been making headlines on the online felts over the past few months and now he just narrowly missed out the OPOM title in November, finishing just 223 points behind Shepel.

However, things have been trending up in 2021 for Lima who is currently challenging Pedro ‘pvigar’ Garagnani for the worldwide #1 rank, having recently taken over the #2 spot. His rapid rise in the rankings can be traced back to having successful runs as he did in November. He kicked off the month with a win runner-up finish in the GGPoker Sunday High Rollers for $74,474 and 470.70 points. A week later, he took third in the same tournament for $77,172, his high score of the month, and another 365.77 points.

He racked up nine five-figure scores, five of which accumulated points for the Online Player of the Month race and two of which he binked on the same day. The first was the November 21 edition of the PokerStars High Roller Club $530 Bounty Builder in which he earned $28,311 and 289.09 points and then, hours later, he scored silver again in the GGPoker $840 Omaholic Hundred Stack for another $20,479 and 217.62 points. In total, Lima earned over $466,000 and finds himself less than $25,000 away from eclipsing $5 million in total lifetime earnings.

Another name that has been making waves lately is Enrico ‘whatisL0v3’ Camosci who finished the November race in third place.

The worldwide #3-ranked Camosci, like Lima, has been a powerhouse in the online rankings and only solidified his position in the top 5 with a stellar month. However, unlike both Lima and Shepel, Camosci didn’t overwhelm the competition with volume. He racked up 68 in-the-money finishes and made his top scores really count.

His most impressive cash came on November 2 when he finished as the runner-up in the GGPoker Sunday MILLION$ for a career-high $247,771 score plus 797.18 leaderboard points. He backed that up with another healthy score on November 8 when he final tabled the GGPoker $1,050 GGMasters High Roller for another $26,749. Then on the 22nd, a runner-up finish in the same event brought him $75,352 and 473.46 points. Those three results make up for more than half of his leaderboard score.

Camosci finished the month with more than $520,000 in earnings which put him up over $12 million in career earnings.

November 2021 Online Player of the Month Results