Lightning hits twice for British professional Patrick Leonard, who has snagged his second PokerGO Tour title
Occasion #2 of the PGT Final Probability collection – a $10,100 No‑Restrict Maintain’em excessive curler in Las Vegas – drew a wholesome 126 entries and constructed a prize pool of round $1.2 million. Leonard navigated that minefield to financial institution $315,000 up high. Extra importantly for him, the win got here loaded with PGT leaderboard factors.
His first PGT win additionally got here in Occasion #2 of a collection a few yr in the past; this repeat feels much less like coincidence and extra like a signature.
Coming into the ultimate desk, Leonard held the chip lead, solely to observe it slip throughout the desk to Nick Schulman after a type of sick excessive‑curler coolers: Schulman’s pocket eights in tough form versus David Coleman’s jacks, solely to spike quads. Coleman was left quick however refused to die, clinging on via pay jumps and watching names fall round him – Brazil’s Joao Simao in seventh, reigning PGT Participant of the 12 months Jeremy Ausmus in sixth, Schulman himself in the end bowing out in third. By the point Coleman accomplished his miracle ladder to heads‑up, Leonard had performed the quiet, skilled work of rebuilding and recalibrating.
Heads‑up, expertise and stack depth did their job. Leonard – well-known for his head’s up match Vs Kristen Foxen not so way back – closed it out to safe the $315K payday and, simply as crucially, 315 PGT factors.
He got here into the occasion with 943 factors and sat a couple of hundred shy of the highest‑40 lower‑off. The win vaults him to twenty seventh on the season leaderboard, successfully locking up a seat within the $1 million PGT Championship freeroll – the invite‑solely finale that turns a yr of grinding right into a single, excessive‑stakes victory lap.
For a participant already holding a WSOP bracelet and roughly $4.8 million in recorded reside cashes, this second PGT title is much less about validation and extra about positioning.
