When I Was A Donk With Jeff Gross

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.

Jeff Gross discovered poker in high school and continued to play in college while he was on the soccer team at the University of South Carolina. After graduating, Gross continued to play poker while living in Baltimore along with his roommate, Olympian Michael Phelps.

Since then, he’s been traveling the poker circuit, playing in big buy-in tournaments where he’s won more than $2 million. He narrowly missed out on his first WSOP bracelet in 2011 when he took second in a $5,000 shootout event for $269,742 and he finished third in a televised 2012 World Poker Tour event in Montreal for another $319,238. His biggest score came in 2013 when he finished third in the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open high roller for $364,770.

Here, Gross talks about a couple of mistakes he made on the money bubble of a six-figure buy-in tournament.

In early 2014 I was playing in the $100,000 buy-in Alpha8 event in Johannesburg, South Africa, which was basically a glorified sit-n-go because there were only ten entrants. We got down to the final four players and I was the chip leader, with only three spots getting paid. Things were going pretty well.

Jason Mercier, Dan Cates, and myself all had at least 17 big blinds and the short stack was this unknown guy (Kinesh Pather) who had, like, four big blinds. The unknown ended up shoving from under the gun with just a little over four big blinds and it was on me in the big blind with J-4 suited.

I knew he was probably ahead, but in my mind I wanted to end the bubble right then and there. He ended up having A-Q and his hand held to double up. All of the sudden, my stack is getting short and he’s up to nine or ten big blinds, which changes the table dynamics completely.

Clearly, I should have just folded and waited for a better opportunity, but I made things worse a few hands later. The unknown and Jason each had their ten big blinds and Jungleman (Dan), who had me covered, opened with a raise. I had A-8 and decided to shove, thinking that if I got that shove through I’d be guaranteed to make the money.

He tanked forever and finally called with pocket eights. My hand didn’t catch up, and I ended up bubbling. Jason told me he had A-9 that hand and he would’ve shoved had I folded, so that hurt. I know these were borderline plays, but in my mind they were big mistakes. Not only did I not cash, but then I had to take a 14-hour flight back home from South Africa and think about those two hands over and over again.

It was an expensive lesson, but a good one. Ever since then, I’ve been very careful about thinking things through and considering all of the possibilities before I make a decision. I think if I had thought things through a little longer in South Africa, I could’ve won that tournament. ♠