When I Was A Donk With Chris Klodnicki

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.

Chris Klodnicki has been playing cards since high school, getting hooked on hold’em after his older brother introduced him to the game. Despite graduating with a degree in Finance from Lehigh University, Klodnicki opted to try his luck playing poker for a living.

The decision proved to be a wise one, as the New Jersey native has gone on to become one of the more successful poker players in the game today with more than $8.8 million in live tournament earnings and another $2.5 million online.

The 31-year-old has two high profile runner-up WSOP finishes on his poker resume. In 2012, he banked $896,935 in the $50,000 Poker Players Championship event and in 2013, he took home $2,985,495 in the $111,111 One Drop High Roller.

Here, Klodnicki thinks about his early days as a pro.

Poker was so easy early on, back during the Moneymaker boom that a lot of my leaks weren’t really exposed until later on. In fact, I would argue that the biggest mistake I made at the beginning of my career was that I didn’t play enough. I should have definitely taken advantage when the games were still soft, like a lot of poker players did.

Another issue with the games being so soft back then is that I could kind of get away with more at the table. I didn’t need to be disciplined and focused, I could have fun and somehow still win money.

I could even drink during sessions and get away with it. I remember waking up one morning after a long night of drinking and discovering an additional $20,000 in my online poker account that I didn’t remember winning. As the game got harder and harder to beat, then all of that extra stuff had to be put aside.

But if you want a specific poker concept, I will admit to not understanding a concept in razz right away. I didn’t realize that draws were stronger than made hands. The WSOP razz tournament that I got second in back in 2008, I remember making some horrific mistakes. I would have like J-10-9 showing against my opponent’s 2-7-K and I would think that I was ahead. It took me a like a day to figure out why people were raising me, but I somehow got away with it. ♠