When I Was A Donk – Mike Watson

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.

Mike Watson has been one of the most consistent forces on the tournament circuit for the past decade having amassed more than $9 million in live tournament earnings, along with another $3 million online.

Watson has wins on the World Poker Tour, at the World Series of Poker, and, in January, he won the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure main event. The Toronto native who studied at the University of Waterloo currently sits in fifth place on the all-time Canadian earnings list behind notables such as Sorel Mizzi, Mike McDonald, Jonathan Duhamel, and Daniel Negreanu.

Here, Watson talks about how he is able to learn from his mistakes and move on.

I feel like I sometimes make decisions that I’m not sure about, but I’m at the level now where I don’t really make many huge mistakes. I do get really frustrated with the small mistakes though. If I look back at a tournament and can see all of those spots where I should’ve known better, then I can get down on myself a little bit.

Sometimes it can take a couple days to get over a crucial hand, whether it’s a bustout hand or just a good spot to pick up some chips. Every now and then I’ll talk about a particular hand with some friends, just to get some affirmation, but you can’t do that just to show people you got unlucky. I think some people talk about hands, but it ends up being a bad beat story. I’m pretty good at keeping those to myself and only talking about the interesting spots where it could go either way.

I think that’s what good players do. A good player makes a mistake, and then learns from it. You can’t just focus on your good plays or it will be tough to get better. Some time passes, a new tournament starts, and you learn to let those mistakes go and focus on the next thing. But if a similar spot comes up again, you’ll be ready to make the right decision. ♠