When I Was A Donk With Justin Bonomo

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.

Justin Bonomo has been among the best poker players in the world for almost a decade and has more than $8.8 million in live tournament earnings to show for it. His best results have come in the last four years, starting with the Super High Roller event at the 2012 EPT Grand Final, which he won for $2,167,588.

In 2013, he finished second in the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open main event for $1,163,500 and then followed that up in 2014 with his first World Series of Poker bracelet, taking down a $1,500 six-handed no-limit hold’em event for $49,980. Most recently, he finished fourth in the Aussie Millions High Roller for $621,520.

Here, Bonomo recalls an expensive mistake he made on the money bubble of a $100,000 buy-in tournament.

In 2013, I made the final day of a $100,000 High Roller event at the Bellagio. The event was going to be televised from the final table of six, but only five players would get paid. Basically, we were starting the final day on the money bubble.

I raised with A-10 offsuit and John Juanda three-bet me from out of position. The three-bet wasn’t too big and I was getting a good price. He had me covered, but only by a little bit, and I wanted to keep the pot small, so I called. In any other circumstance, calling in that spot is completely standard, but given the fact that we were on the money bubble, I probably should have made a tight fold. The flop came ten-high rainbow, which is obviously one of the better flops I can get with my hand, and Juanda moved all in for about two times the pot.

At the time, my impression of him was that he played very aggressive, but over the years, I’ve since realized that he’s not as aggressive as I originally thought. I should have known that he doesn’t play smaller buy-in tournaments the same way that he plays high roller tournaments and that the bubble would also affect the range of hands he made that play with. But I somehow convinced myself that he had a hand like A-K and I called, only to have him show me pocket kings. I didn’t get lucky on the turn or river and I busted on the bubble.

There’s not some major underlying lesson that I learned from this hand, it was just a bad read. I thought of Juanda as a much more aggressive player than he really was and in hindsight, I should have just taken the more conservative line and folded either preflop or on the flop to give myself a better chance at not only making the money, but winning the tournament as well. If I just give it up preflop, then there could have been a completely different outcome. ♠