When I Was A Donk – David Peters

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.

David Peters is the quiet assassin of the high-stakes poker world. Although his first recorded cash dates back to 2006, its been the last two years on the circuit that have really placed Peters among the elite. In 2015, he won more than $2.9 million and so far this year, he’s already locked up another $5 million.

With more than $12 million in live tournament earnings, the Toledo, Ohio native currently sits in 23rd place on the all-time winnings list. Also, as a result of his stellar 2016 campaign, he is now in second place in the Card Player Player of the Year race.

Here, Peters talks about a concept that he struggled with early in his career.

I’m having trouble coming up with a specific hand off the top of my head. That’s not to say that I’ve always played perfectly, I just think I do a pretty good job of getting it off my mind relatively quickly.

One thing I wish I had known more about when I first started playing is how to defend your big blind. My problem was that I would defend way too tight and looking back, I definitely burned a lot of money doing that.

How wide you defend will vary depending on a number of factors, such as the preflop raiser’s opening frequency, bet sizing, stack sizes, opponent’s skill level, and things like that. If I feel that my blind is getting raised too often, then I’ll make an adjustment, but it’s all very player dependent. If you take it too far and defend too wide, then you’ll end up bleeding away your stack.

I just had no idea how wide your range should be in the big blind and I’m sure the better players noticed and took advantage of that. Of course, that’s how almost everyone used to play. Most players used to be pretty passive when it came the blinds because the thought at the time was that you didn’t want to play from out of position. That’s still pretty good advice for beginners, but more advanced players shouldn’t be making it easy for their opponents to steal. ♠