When I Was A Donk With Anthony Zinno

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.

Anthony Zinno originally planned a career in patent law before his passion for poker took over. He made his first big score in 2009, taking second in a $1,500 event at Foxwoods for $55,290. After a few more final table finishes in Atlantic City, Zinno banked $86,964 for a fourth-place showing at the Card Player Poker Tour main event stop at the Venetian in 2013.

Then, in September of the same year, Zinno returned to the Northeast and won the World Poker Tour Borgata Poker Open main event for $825,099, defeating fellow lawyer turned poker pro Vanessa Selbst heads-up for the title.

The Cranston, Rhode Island native, who now resides in Boston, Massachusetts, has racked up 20 final tables in the last five years and pocketed more than $1.5 million in live tournament earnings.

Here, he talks about one of his earlier mistakes before turning pro.

“About five years ago, I was playing in an online tournament. At this time, I was still only playing recreationally. I made the final table and was in the unique position of having a huge stack along with one other person. The other seven players were very short-stacked and there was a lot of money up top.”

“So as far as ICM (Independent Chip Model) considerations go, it was a dream situation. I could basically sit back, pick my spots, and guarantee myself a top three finish. I could have sat out of the tournament, went on an hour break and still placed in the top five.”

“You can probably guess where this is going. Of course, I ended up getting into a massive pot with the only other player at the table who had me covered, not having any clue that I was supposed to avoid situations like that.”

“It wasn’t even a cooler. I raised from the button with A-Q, he three-bet me from the blinds and then I spazzed out. We ended up getting it all in preflop and his A-K held up and I busted in ninth or something like that. It took me months to get over that.”

“After that, I took the time to get more familiar with ICM and just how valuable your chips are in certain situations. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m going to let the big stack run me over at a final table, but I’m definitely better about picking my battles.” ♠