In the final days of December, Dara O’Kearney (pictured), who goes by Dokehere on PocketFives, walked away with his second online poker Triple Crown. If you aren’t familiar with the award, a PocketFives Triple Crown requires a player to win three $10,000 prize pool tournaments across three sites tracked for the PocketFives Rankings within the same seven-day period. We had a half-dozen Triple Crown winners in December and so caught up with O’Kearney to congratulate the Irishman on his second title.

PocketFives: On December 27th, you won the PokerStars $7,500 Guaranteed, which had a prize pool that neared $14,000, for $2,900. One day later, you took down the Poker770 $10,000 Guaranteedfor $3,400 before capturing a Triple Crown in the PartyPoker $10,000 Guaranteed. How does your second Triple Crown compare to your first?

Dara O’Kearney: It’s nice to prove the first one wasn’t a fluke, but to be honest, the first one meant a lot more, as apparently I was the first Irish player to get one. My friend Jono EMSGAWA9 Crute had a Triple Crown sweat at the start of year when he was staying in my house for a week. Seeing how much he wanted to be the first Irish player to get one made me want one too.

PocketFives: Can you walk us through each of the three tournaments?

Dara O’Kearney: The first one was on PokerStars. I normally play evenings and nights, but am trying to move to days, so it was during my first daytime grind. I entered a $109 freezeout, ran like God, and won it handily enough. The following evening, I entered a ton of stuff on iPoker and PartyPoker and ended up binking a $50 freezeout on iPoker. It was quite ironic that the first two Triple Crown legs were freezeouts since I specialize in rebuys.

The next day, I was playing live in Dublin, so I didn’t have an evening grind, but did play late on Carbon Poker. I got heads-up in the High Roller there with the chip lead against Miguel Silva, but lost a bunch of races and came up short.

The following evening, I played pretty much everything on PartyPoker and got down to the final three in a $100 freezeout with half the chips. Unfortunately, the other two players were beasts – joaomathiasand p0cket00 – so I couldn’t exactly be too complacent. I ended up heads-up against joaomathias and took it down.

PocketFives: Why do you specialize in rebuys over freezeouts?

Dara O’Kearney: I think a lot of fish play in rebuys and the gambling nature of them makes it easier for me to accumulate a stack early. They also play deeper for longer, which suits me.

PocketFives: We know you’re quite proud of your Irish roots. What’s the poker scene like in your home country?

Dara O’Kearney: I’m very much rooted in the Irish scene in terms of live poker. I’m sponsored by the Irish Entraction site Irish Eyes Poker and am pretty well known as a live player here. Most people, in fact, probably wouldn’t realize that I’m predominantly an online player. The live poker scene here is very good. There’s a good calendar of tournaments and lots of people play regularly in festivals and clubs. Poker is very much a mass sport here, I think, compared to a lot of other countries.

PocketFives: Which Irish poker players do you admire the most and why? There are a lot of them to choose from.

Dara O’Kearney: Of the all-time greats, I’d have to say Padraig Parkinson (pictured), as he put us on the map in a very real sense and he’s a great character. Of the current crop, I really admire a lot of the young grinders for their work ethic and constant commitment to improve, guys like Jono Crute, David Lappin, and Big Mick G.

Getting back to Parkinson, he’s a good mate. He is always great to spend time with. I told him once that he invented a lot of the stuff online players take for granted like the UTG steal and small-ball poker. He replied in his own inimitable manner that it was great so long as nobody had a name for what he was doing, but once it was given a name, the word was out.

Learn how to get your own online poker Triple Crown.