Leckey Dominates Clarke in a Preflop Battle of Local Legends

A pair of well-known Irish poker players were just in a preflop raising war on Table 14 in Paul Leckey and Patrick Clarke. We already highlighted some of Clarke's achievements earlier in the coverage, but Leckey has some poker achievements as well. Leckey has almost $900,000 in career cashes as tracked by the Hendon Mob, including a fifth-place finish in the 2016 EPT Prague €10,300 High Roller for €224,600.

Clarke opened the action with a raise and was three-bet by Leckey. Clarke then four-bet before calling an all-in bet from Leckey to generate a pot of more than 30,000.

When both players' hole cards were turned over, Leckey was dominating the hand with pocket aces to Clarke's ace-king. The board was of no help to Clarke who was eliminated. However, as quickly as Clarke was out, he is back in the Day 1b field again with a fresh stack on a new table.

Meanwhile, Leckey's stack has ballooned to 76,000 placing him among the early chip leaders. Leckey is looking to improve on his deep run in last year's partypoker Irish Festival - GPPT & WPT National Ireland €1,100 Main Event where he finished in 22nd place for €2,500.