PADS on PADS: Run It Once's Newest Course w/ Patrick Leonard
In late February 2021, Run It Once Training partnered with Patrick “pads1161” Leonard to release his MTT course aptly named “Pads on Pads.” With over $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 2016)
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 a $100 MTT by the FT you could be effectively playing a $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 2021 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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