When I Was A Donk: Owen Crowe

In this series, Card Player asks top pros to rewind back to their humble beginnings and provide insights regarding the mistakes, leaks, and deficiencies that they had to overcome in order to improve their games.

Owen Crowe was one of the original online poker tournament superstars. The Halifax, Nova Scotia native racked up nearly $2.8 million in internet winnings before switching his attention to live tournaments.

Since then, he’s added another $2.5 million in live scores, which includes a 15th-place finish in the 2008 World Series of Poker main event and a fifth-place showing at the 2013 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure main event.

These days, when he’s not traveling the world playing live poker tournaments, Crowe spends his time grinding cash games in Los Angeles. Here, Crowe explains one of the biggest leaks in his game during the early stages of his career.

“When I was a donk? More like, when will I stop being a donk? I’m still making a lot of the same mistakes I was making when I first started. Some habits are really hard to break.”

“I guess my biggest mistake early in my career was jumping into cash games that I wasn’t prepared for. I was a successful tournament player with a solid win rate, but I would take a lot of that profit and play cash games that were way above my head.“

“I remember playing $100-$200 limit hold’em, for example, when it was the biggest game online. Only the elite players were sitting in that game, but there I was, raising every pot and seeing way too many showdowns. I hated folding. I would four-bet the turn with air. I thought everyone was always bluffing. I was terrible.”

“Part of the reason I played was because I was a bit of a degenerate and, honestly, part of me thought that I could actually beat the game and be the guy everyone looked up at. The truth is that the regulars were building games around me. Guys like Brock Parker would follow me around online, waiting for me to sit in games.”

“I’ve since learned to control my ego and stick to the games that are profitable for me. In order to stay in this game, you don’t necessarily have to beat the best, you just have to beat the guys sitting at the table with you.” ♠