Over the weekend, Patrick pleno1Leonard (pictured) final tabled the PokerStars Sunday $100 Rebuyfor $21,000. He’s the #3 player in the PocketFives Rankings despite only transitioning to MTTs earlier this year and stands at $1.3 million in lifetime winnings. You can find him on Stars under the user name pads1161 and he was kind enough to give us his thoughts on what he considered a monumental breakthrough.

PocketFives: Nice job on the Sunday $100 Rebuy final table. How are you feeling about it?

Patrick Leonard: Sundays have been fantastic to me all year. I really try to prepare for them. I’ve final tabled almost all of Majors this year, but the one tournament I never cashed in and seemed to bust early from was the $109 Rebuy. I joked with friends the week previously that I’d never play the tournament again when I lost A-A to A-2 all-in pre-flop. My friend said he’d bet me $1,000 that I would play it again, but I didn’t take the bet. To come in fourth is good. I get back a lot of the money I lost playing it previously and a little more to spend in future weeks.

Coming in fourth was quite disappointing, honestly. I went into the final table 2/9 and had a big gap over third. I blew up in one hand where I 5bet-folded on an 8-8-2 flop against the chip leader where I never expected him to 4bet a value hand (8-8 or 2-2). Despite me not playing a value hand like that either, I put in 700,000 out of my 1.2 million-chip stack, but he instantly eyeballed me and I felt really stupid.

All of the medium stacks busted consecutively, though, meaning I locked up a $20,000+ cash, but going into the final table, I definitely wouldn’t have wanted fourth.

PocketFives: What about the $109 Rebuy made it difficult for you to get over the hump?

Patrick Leonard: I’m not sure. I was definitely running badly. By the end of the rebuy period, lots of tables are starting to pop up that take my attention, so perhaps I wasn’t paying enough attention to it. In the last two Sundays, I’ve taken out PartyPokerand 888 Poker, which make my eyes bleed. That has helped me focus more on PokerStars and Full Tilt, which definitely has helped. I think previously I tried some ambitious bluffs when sometimes you’ve got to realize that it’s Sunday and nobody ever folds a bluff-catcher.

PocketFives: You’ve been at or near the top of the PocketFives Rankings for a while now. How big of an accomplishment is that for you? Do you pay any attention to your position?

Patrick Leonard: I definitely pay attention to it. People often say that the PocketFives Rankings don’t mean anything, but look at all of the guys in the top 10. I think all of them are up at least $200,000 and most of them are up even more. Of course, there are some guys who don’t play high volume who will never be there, but the guys who rise to the top aren’t guys who got lucky in one or two tournaments; they are guys who are consistently putting up solid results.

TheClaimeer (pictured), for example, grinds really hard most days. If there were no Rankings, then guys like him would go un-noticed. Lots of guys who are “very good at poker” are not very good at making money in poker, either. I really get spurred on by the Rankings and they were one of my main reasons for transitioning from cash games to MTTs.

I stopped playing for two or three weeks and it was just after I got to #1 on PocketFives. Previously, I would check every week and see myself going from fifth to fourth to third to second and then first. When I stopped playing, I was almost scared to look that I would be out of the top 10. I saw I was 15th or so and grinded hard to get back to the top. The Rankings, if anything, make me put in volume; hopefully if I put in volume I will make money.

PocketFives: What has been the biggest change in your game over the last 12 months?

Patrick Leonard: Understanding what MTT guys do. It’s well documented that I didn’t play tournaments until March of this year. Lots of things I would do in cash games just don’t work in MTTs. The “blow up” from the $109 Rebuy on Sunday was similar to that.

I think knowing when to hold it in and when to fire out is the biggest thing. Everybody knows how to bluff, how to play tight, how to 3bet, etc., but the thing that separates the okay from the best is knowing when to do what, and a lot of that comes with experience. I’m definitely still learning and am far away from a finished product despite having a good year.

PocketFives: You mentioned the Rankings caused you to want to play tournaments. What else prompted that change?

Patrick Leonard: I played a live tournament where I met some cash game friends, lost some stupid flip deep into the money, and went to bed telling them I’d never play a tournament again. We woke up, it was Sunday, we hadn’t eaten yet, and we just started registering for tournaments that day. I chopped the Warm-Up, won the $250 Six-Max on PokerStars.fr and the $30 Rebuy on PokerStars.com, and my roommate won the 888 Poker Major and something else. I wasn’t planning on playing tournaments, but the week after was the anniversary Sunday Million; I came in ninth for $110,000 and decided to stick with it.

The Sunday $100 Rebuy runs weekly on PokerStars. If you don’t already have a PokerStars account, sign up through the links on PocketFives to get a 100% up to $600 deposit bonus and a free PocketFives t-shirt. Get started here.

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