When I Was A Donk – Lee Markholt

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.

Lee Markholt has been a fixture of the poker world since the early 90’s. The Washington native really started putting up serious results around the poker boom and in 2005, he won the Professional Poker Tour main event at Bellagio for $225,000. In 2008, he won his first World Poker Tour title, earning $493,815 at the World Poker Challenge in Reno.

In 2013, he narrowly missed his first World Series of Poker bracelet when he finished runner-up in a $5,000 six-handed no-limit hold’em event for $374,960. In total, Markholt has more than $4 million in live tournament earnings.

Here, Markholt recalls an embarrassing experience with a new game.

I was just 21 years old, playing in these small, smoke-filled, five-table cardrooms back in Tacoma, Washington. This was back in 1984, if I remember correctly. One day, the players wanted to play limit Omaha, high only. I had played some hold’em. I had played stud. I had played draw and even a lot of pineapple, but I had never played Omaha before.

I remember one hand very clearly. I had been dealt three kings in my hand and after the fourth king came on the flop, I was under the impression that I had made quads. Of course I took all bets and raises, pushed the action the whole way, and lost a big pot.

Losing the pot wasn’t that bad, but it was embarrassing that I didn’t even understand how to play the game. I got a lot of weird looks, for sure. I played a little bit longer and then sheepishly walked out of there.

That room never spread Omaha, but I guess they knew I was coming or something because that was the game that day. After the hand, there was a guy I had played with quite a bit who was nice enough to explain to me that I could only use two of my hole cards in Omaha. Luckily we didn’t play it again for a while and when we did, we played it with a hi/lo split and it didn’t take me too long to get the hang of it. ♠