Doke Wins Second Triple Crown
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.
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