When I Was A Donk – Mark Radoja

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.

Even though he sports an impressive poker resume, Canadian Mark Radoja considers himself to be just a part-time pro given his limited playing schedule. The Guelph, Ontario resident spends most of his time on his real estate business, but that hasn’t stopped him from crushing both online and live tournaments over the better part of the last decade.

In 2010, Radoja finished third in the $5,000 buy-in six-handed no-limit hold’em event at the World Series of Poker for $262,902. In 2011, he won his first bracelet in the $5,000 no-limit hold’em shootout event for $436,568. In 2012, he took home $281,502 for finishing runner-up in the $1,500 six-handed no-limit hold’em event. Finally in 2013, he won again, this time for $331,190 in the $10,000 heads-up no-limit hold’em event. In total, Radoja has pocketed nearly $1.9 million in live tournament earnings.

Here, Radoja talks about a couple of mistakes he made when he first discovered the game.

I’ve been playing poker for about 10 years now. When I first started, I was just messing around, mostly betting sports, so I made a lot of the typical mistakes that amateurs players tend to make.

One that I distinctly remember, and that I’m sure a lot of people can relate to, is that I had a tendency to slow-play all of my big preflop hands. If I was dealt pocket aces or kings, then I would almost always limp in. Now, this can be a good play if you are confident someone will raise behind you, but in my mind, I was hoping that everyone at the table would come into the pot, as if I had set the perfect trap. I didn’t realize at the time that my hand played much better against only one or two opponents.

These days you can make a play like that, hoping to get a raise behind you to get the pot heads-up. But if you find yourself on the flop with four or five opponents, you have to be able to read players very well and maybe get away from your hand.

Another mistake I made, which is really embarrassing, is that I tried to do my own math on the probability of hitting a flush. In my mind, since there were only four suits, then I would hit my flush 25 percent of the time. And since I got to see the turn and river, 25 plus 25 gave me a 50 percent chance of making my flush.

Eventually, I realized that you don’t make a flush half of the time and that maybe I should find some other resources to learn from. Once I stopped relying on learning by trial and error, my game got much better. ♠