Patrick Leonard Wins His First WSOP Bracelet

Team partypoker’s Patrick Leonard has become a World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner after he and teammate Espen Jorstad took down the $1,000 Tag Team event at the 2022 WSOP in Las Vegas.

The Tag Team event is unique because, as the name suggests, the field is made up of teams who can tag each other should they fancy a break from the action or if they feel one team member is better suited to the crop of opponents currently in action.

Some 913 teams entered on Day 1 but they were reduced to a more manageable 183 by the close of play. Day 2 saw the field whittled to only 20 teams, and Team Leonard found itself seventh in chips with a 1,060,000 stack.

The penultimate day concluded with only five teams in contention for the bracelet. Team Leonard was third in chips, but their shared stack of 2,235,000 was the equivalent of only 15 big blinds, while Team Paggeot, made up of Corey Paggeot and Jamie Kerstetter, led the way with 7,795,000 chips, or 53 big blinds.

Team Kraemer (Mackenzie Kraemer and Jon Schiller) busted early into the final day, Kraemer’s failing to improve against Kerstetter’s superior .

Leonard Doubles Through Tsugaru

A key hand saw Leonard double with against the of Team Tsugaru‘s Yaturo Tsugaru, with the chips going into the middle preflop and the board running out . That gave Leonard and Jorstad some breathing room, but they still trailed the chip leaders by almost three-to-one.

Kerstetter then busted Team Spitale (Frank Spitale and Martin Pochat) when Spitale called all-in with after Kerstetter jammed on him from the small blind. Kerstetter flipped over , and won the hand courtesy of a run-out.

Paggeot took over from Kerstetter and quickly claimed the tournament life of Tsugaru. Paggeot raised enough from the small blind to put Tsugaru all-in. Tsugaru called with and was ahead of his opponent’s until an eight landed on the river.

That hand gave Team Paggeot a 15,600,000 to 2,650,000 lead over Team Leonard.

Team Leonard doubled when Jorstad’s held against Paggeot’s dominated , then soared into the lead when the same pairing clashed again, this time with versus .

Neither team managed to pull away from the other until an exceptional play from Jorstad turned the tournament in his team’s favour. Paggeot min-raised to 400,000, Jorstad three-bet to 1,400,000, and Paggeot four-bet to 4,200,000. Jorstad tanked before emerging with an all-in five-bet of 9,000,000, to which Paggeot instantly folded. Paggeot was bluffing with while Jorstad held .

Leonard was in the driving seat for the final hand of the tournament. He moved all in with and it was a race against Paggeot’s . The kept the sevens ahead, with the turn failing to alter the hand’s course. The completed the board, and confirmed Team Leonard as the Tag Team champions!

Leonard and Jorstad banked $148,067 to share but, more importantly, they both became WSOP bracelet winners and are forever immortalised into poker’s history books. The entire partypoker team is extremely proud of Leonard and Jorstad, congratulations, guys!

Lead image courtesy of PokerNews