When I Was A Donk – Will Failla

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.

If you play poker for a living, then you know and have heard from Will Failla. The boisterous Lake Ronkonkoma, New York native is a shark at the tables, but that doesn’t stop him from being the life of his own party as he wisecracks his way through a tournament field.

Failla’s biggest score came at the 2011 WPT Legends of Poker main event, which he won for $758,085. In 2015, he won the Borgata Summer Poker Open for $283,301 and he also has other wins at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, Foxwoods Poker Classic, and on the Heartland Poker Tour. In total, he has earned more than $5.3 million.

Here, Failla talks about a mistake that happened in a big buy-in tournament.

A big hand comes to mind. Back in 2005, I made my first final table at Foxwoods in a $1,000 by-in event. I had a huge stack with nine players left, something like 150 big blinds. The guy next to me opened with a standard raise, and I looked down at A-K.

I didn’t want to call or three-bet and be put into an awkward spot, so something in me just decided to try and end the hand right there by moving all in. It was a massive shove, so predictably, one by one people quickly folded their hands. Until it got back to the original raiser, who had me slightly covered, and he was all too happy to call with aces.

I regretted that play for a long time. I should have just called, or three-bet to see where I was. I didn’t have to go broke there. I honestly felt like a fool when he turned over those aces. It was embarrassing.

I could have easily just sat there and made the top three without even playing, but I got panicked and ended up busting in ninth place. Of course, that was back when I was married to A-K. Now, I don’t even like A-K.

It really did haunt me for about two years, blowing that first final table. When you first start out playing, you really don’t know when or if you are going to get another opportunity like that. Of course, I’ve been fortunate to have many more opportunities over the years to make up for it, but at the time, it felt like crucial spot that I really screwed up. ♠