Last week, PocketFives.com member Jeff jshark4 Sharkey took home a Triple Crown after winning the Cake Poker $20,000 Guaranteed for over $5,000. The $162 buy-in tournament easily broke its guarantee and capped off a five-day Triple Crown run that also saw Sharkey final table a handful of other tournaments that are tracked for the PocketFives.com Online Poker Rankings. PocketFives.com sat down with Sharkey to recap his run.His first Triple Crown leg came by virtue of winning the UB.com $30 rebuy on November 21st for nearly $3,000. The afternoon event drew much of his attention and he claimed, “UB is really weak, so I don’t really think there was much resistance there. I pretty much just 3bet on the final table bubble and built up a pretty good stack.” Around the bubble on UB.com, the $40,000 Guaranteed kicked off on Full Tilt Poker. On the $69 buy-in event, Sharkey recalled, “I wasn’t really focused much on the Full Tilt tournament because it was still really early and I was down to two tables on UB. I just put it on the other monitor and auto-piloted it.”
Sharkey was short-stacked in the Full Tilt Poker $40,000 Guaranteed from the final four tables down to 11 players remaining. He recalled that he sucked out twice right before the final table and entered with a top three stack. His win was worth $8,400 and set up a potential Triple Crown with one more qualifying victory: “I was really excited to try to get a Triple Crown. In fact, at the time I don’t think I even had any money on Cake Poker and traded some money around from the wins.” He won Cake Poker’s $6,000 Guaranteed for $1,500 the next day, but it did not qualify for a Triple Crown because its prize pool sagged below $10,000.
On both November 23rd and 25th, Sharkey final tabled the Cake Poker $20,000 Guaranteed for a combined payday of $7,500. His second effort, a win, was worth 150 PLB Points and earned him $5,000 alone. On the field that turned out for the tournament, Sharkey told PocketFives.com, “Cake Poker is kind of weak when events get deep. It seems that people raise/fold a lot more often on that site than on PokerStars or Full Tilt, so I was just 3betting a lot near the bubble and when I thought someone was weak.” Four-handed, he came over the top of a raiser pre-flop with A-10 offsuit for 25 big blinds and Andrew Chen made the call with pocket tens. An ace on the river saved Sharkey’s stack and propelled him to victory.
He was overjoyed to find himself on the list of Triple Crown winners: “I was really excited. I remember about a year and a half ago I was looking through the site and all of the Triple Crown winners. I wondered how in the world they could be that good to win three tournaments in a week when I had trouble just making the final table of one in a month.” He picked up 460 PLB Points in the process and a three-page thread developed congratulating Sharkey on his accomplishment.
A $5 debt from a friend earned him entry into a home game, setting up his poker career. He was taken to school the first time around, but he noted, “I’m kind of competitive, so I went home and tried to learn as much as I could so that the next time they played, I could show them.” He ultimately became backed by Mark dipthrong Herm and Dan djk123 Kelly in February. Sharkey explained, “I started out in mid-stakes and after a few good scores, they allowed me to move up to the bigger buy-ins. That whole group has helped me immensely with my poker game: Herm, Kelly, Jamie pokerjamers Armstrong, Benson BBOY3110 Nikkerson (pictured at left), shanetrain22, Gags30, and 99NvrLosez.”Also helping his cause is his girlfriend, fellow PocketFives.com member Julie JRisk17 Risk (pictured at top with Sharkey). Backed by 99NvrLosez and Nikkerson, Risk has seen her presence online grow. In September, she took down the PokerStars $25,000 Guaranteed for $5,600, about the same amount that she earned for trumping the field of the Full Tilt $21,000 KO Guaranteed.
Check out the full list of PocketFives.com Triple Crown winners.
Canada
United Kingdom
Costa Rica
Australia
Mexico
Denmark
Russian Federation
Sweden
Brazil
Germany
