When I Was A Donk – David Vamplew

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 Vamplew grew up in Kirkcaldy, Scotland and graduated from the University of Edinburgh before deciding to try and make a career out of poker. In 2010, he took down the European Poker Tour London main event, earning more than $1.4 million. The very next year, he had final-table finishes in the WPT Venice main event and at the WSOP in Las Vegas.

In 2013, Vamplew narrowly missed his first WSOP bracelet with two runner-up finishes worth a combined $755,000. With more final-table appearances in Macau, Prague, Deauville, Monte Carlo, Barcelona, and a win in the Bahamas, Vamplew has managed to rack up more than $3.8 million in live tournament earnings in just seven years as a pro.

Here, Vamplew talks about how beginning players can move up the ranks.

When I initially started playing poker, I think like most people I struggled a bit moving past that first stage where you are just playing your own cards. I’m not sure what I was thinking back then, but it may have been just as simple as trying to connect with the board and hoping my hand held up.

But after a bit of that, I realized that you can’t just sit back and wait for great cards or wait to flop something huge, and that’s when I started to play poker with the other players’ cards in mind.

I started out by just trying not to be so passive, and from there, I slowly realized just how much I could get away with. When you start figuring how to pick those spots properly, that’s when poker can become really fun and quite addicting. I wasn’t really the type to show off my bluffs or anything like that, but I would feel really pleased with myself when I stole a pot I shouldn’t have won.

But once you make that next step, you start running into other problems as well. If you get too aggressive, you’re going to have to find a way to reel yourself in, and that can be hard to do when you see other players putting in raises every other hand.

You have to be able to sit down at the table and be flexible. If the table is letting you run them over, then you take advantage. But if the other players are very good or you have a bad position at the table, then you have to adjust and pick your spots. At the end of the day, it’s all about getting the most chips, not about boosting your ego. ♠