PADS on PADS: Run It Once's Newest Course w/ Patrick Leonard
April 12, 2024 Run It
Once
In late February 2024, Run 🧲 It Once Training partnered with Patrick “pads1161”
Leonard to release his MTT course aptly named “Pads on Pads.” With overR$15 🧲 million in
combined live & online earnings, Leonard is one of the most accomplished MTT pros in
the world. Though 🧲 not their first, the course represents the site’s first foray into a
truly comprehensive dive into a specific poker variant 🧲 geared towards high level
players.
The course contains roughly 80 hours of content covering everything from range
construction, PSKO’s, HU play, 🧲 and even off the table things that are important to
becoming a better overall tournament player.
We reached out to Pads 🧲 to hear in his own
words what the motivation was for a course of this nature, what separates it from 🧲 other
courses on the market, and why he decided to partner with Run It Once Training.
Why did
you decide to 🧲 partner with Run It Once Training?
PADS: In all honesty it wasn’t an easy
decision; I am really close friends with 🧲 so many of the different guys, Bencb for
example, I have an amazing public relationship with and it would have 🧲 made sense to
partner with him. It was one of the toughest decisions, but also was a luxury decision.
RIO 🧲 was the first site I ever signed up to. I think I was in the first 100 members and
have 🧲 been a paying member every month for almost a decade now. I believe in them. I
like them. I trust 🧲 them and I enjoy that they have no drama attached to them. They’re
extremely classy both in terms of morals, 🧲 but their site is also IMO second to none. It
was crucial the course LOOKED good and seeing it that 🧲 first day made me go WOW I made
the right choice.
What was the motivation to create this course, why now?
PADS: 🧲 I
genuinely love poker. I created content or gave strategy advice every day for 6-7 years
when I ran bitB. 🧲 It was a huge part of my life and after leaving bitB, I tried going
over lots of courses or 🧲 other ways to consume content, but they just didn’t connect
with me. I think the best thing about poker is 🧲 everybody has a different take on it and
everybody likes different people's takes. I decided, hey, let’s start a YouTube 🧲 channel
and create content and if people like my take then let’s follow through and do a
course. So I 🧲 started making content, recording fun videos, serious videos and
everything in-between. The feedback was phenomenal, I’ll be honest, all I’ve 🧲 heard from
people is “the poker community is so toxic” so I was ready to get slaughtered, but
literally everybody 🧲 was so, so nice. And I got a lot out of that, giving back to other
people, I think that 🧲 being selfless is one of the most selfish things you can do. It’s
such a nice feeling having people write 🧲 to you that you’ve helped them that I said
let's just do this properly.
What does your course offer that other 🧲 courses on the
market do not?
PADS: What started as a 40 video series led me down a path where I
🧲 decided that if I was going to do this I was going to do it properly:
I didn’t want to
hold 🧲 anything back, I wanted to cover everything. I didn’t want this to be popular and
then make an ICM course, 🧲 then a live sessions course, then a PSKO course then a mental
game course.
I knew that was the smartest thing 🧲 from business POV, to milk it as much
as possible, but I was way more motivated by making THE best 🧲 course of all time, or at
least attempt to.
We definitely have the quantity, but I feel like we also have 🧲 the
quality. I know what I’m good at and I know what others are better at. I brought in
Kevin 🧲 Rabichow to do the HU portion of the course with me. He is so good at HU and such
a 🧲 great teacher, I brought in Pwndidi who plays the highest stake PSKO tournaments in
the world and is renowned by 🧲 everybody at this point as the best PSKO coach. I brought
in 4 guys who were winning hundreds of thousands 🧲 of dollars and did reviews with them
about how they win at medium stakes. I focused very heavily on postflop 🧲 and ICM (90
videos!) as I believe that's where the money is made and then I recorded some of my
🧲 sessions in January and was super fortunate to win 3 tournaments to get some really
nice footage. So I would 🧲 say we have the quantity, the quality, the best guests and the
run good. We also add new videos every 🧲 month to ensure the current “META” remains in
the course. I think this is very crucial for how a course 🧲 rates.
Flashback: partypoker
Ambassador Patrick Leonard Believes Player Voices Are Being Heard (April 2024)
What’s a
tournament concept that you think people 🧲 misunderstand? Why do you think that is?
PADS:
I think a lot of ICM spots are misunderstood, that's mostly because of 🧲 how boring and
repetitive it is to study ICM. Where CHIPEV is all about sexy overbets, flamboyant
river bluff catchers 🧲 and attempting triple x/r’s down the streets, ICM is all about
being disciplined, doing the boring stuff correctly, but then 🧲 knowing exactly how and
when to move up the gears. ICM studying is just simply pretty boring and you have 🧲 to
put the reps in. The model we use (ICM) is accepted by the community to be very flawed,
so 🧲 people just say “why should I study the most boring part where the tools are
flawed??” To me, it’s crucial 🧲 to study and try and improve our rationale of ICM because
it's where we play the highest stakes. If you’re 🧲 playing aR$100 MTT by the FT you could
be effectively playing aR$50,000 MTT! I try to teach it in a 🧲 way that's very engaging
or more exciting. I review lots of different final tables and analyze every hand from
every 🧲 player's perspective, using theories, tools and different methods of how to move
away from the rigid structures of the flawed 🧲 tools that exist. I then bring in the 5
other guests to speak about how they view the FT’s too 🧲 so there is so much discussion
about it.
What do you miss most about playing live tournaments?
PADS: Hearing Sam
Grafton! Honestly 🧲 despite having pretty good live success I don’t enjoy it. I’m an
“online guy.” Quite frustratingly I think I’m a 🧲 stronger live player, I am thinking of
adding a live part to the course when we’re back to normal.
Related: Grafton, 🧲 Coimbra
and Talbot Join PokerStars Team Pro Roster
If you could wave a magic wand and change
three things about the 🧲 way that MTTs are run by all sites across the internet, what
would you change?
PADS: I’d make everything single re-entry, 🧲 I would make it compulsory
that 25% of the field are satellite qualifiers (even if the regs are charged more 🧲 rake)
and I would make them 7 or 8 max. The fact we’re in 2024 and run 9 max tournaments
🧲 astonishes me.
Outside of your own study, who do you think has had the biggest impact
on your poker game and 🧲 how?
PADS: I’ve been fortunate to be surrounded by some real
bosses. At bitB I’ve always been closest to European and 🧲 Elmerixx. We’ve talked poker
every day for 7 years. At bitB the most impressive player was romeopro. He was so
🧲 enthusiastic about the game and years ahead of the competition at the time. Now when
I’m learning (3 years later) 🧲 and I find something cool, I often think “oh wow that's
what romeo was telling me.”
You recently started your own 🧲 football club, can you tell
us a little bit about them and where this idea came from?
PADS: I love football, 🧲 it's
my second passion for sure. I love the idea of a team being in the premier league being
built 🧲 from the internet. If you think about the industries that made the current
football teams we support, its miners, or 🧲 factory workers. Our generation is the
generation of the internet. Your support doesn’t need to be restricted to the factory
🧲 you work in and the city it's registered too. I want to create a team that’s supported
by the internet 🧲 and the fan base gets a “free season ticket” on YouTube.
On Boxing Day,
you released a video on your YouTube 🧲 channel about Jason Koon helping you become a more
positive person. Can you tell us a little bit about your 🧲 thoughts on having a positive
mindset?
PADS: Being positive is everything. Being surrounded by positive people is
everything. I was surrounded 🧲 by complainers for a while and this led to me being very
negative. I would think more about others than 🧲 myself. I mention a lot about it in the
video but yeah another shout out to European and Elmerixx who 🧲 are also two very strong
minded guys and having their influence over the last few years has been invaluable for
🧲 my mindset.
If, for some reason, poker was no longer available to you, what would life
for Patrick Leonard look like?
PADS: 🧲 Most likely trying to organize a uniformed charity
around Europe for dogs that shares funding, resources and best practices. One 🧲 day this
will come true I’m sure!
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more about Patrick Leonard's MTT course 🧲 'Pads on Pads' thanks to Run It Once
