When I Was A Donk With Jared Reinstein

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.

Jared Reinstein is a semi-professional poker player from Tallahassee, Florida who has found success in regional poker tournaments throughout the South East, particularly at bestbest Jacksonville. The 41-year-old recently took down the $1,100 Card Player Poker Tour main event at bestbet for the top prize of $75,714.

Reinstein has gone deep in the tournament in the past as well, taking eighth in 2016 and 22nd two years earlier. In 2014, Reinstein also made the final table of the $5,000 buy-in World Poker Tour bestbet Bounty Scramble, earning $135,223 for finishing in fourth place.

Here, Reinstein talks about the importance of pot control.

I think when I first started playing, I got into some trouble because I had a habit of inflating pots when I didn’t really have to. Some good players pointed out to me that I was either losing value on my big hands, or I was putting myself into bad situations by betting bigger or raising when I should have played more for pot control.

Let’s say I had A-K. If it was preflop and there was a raise in front of me, then I was three-betting too big and forcing folds from hands that I dominated. Or I’d hit the flop, and bet too big forcing all weaker hands to fold. Or I would miss the flop, and make a big continuation bet that cost me too much of my stack.

I think it probably came from not wanting to be sucked out on. I was in a hurry to get my money in good and missed out on a lot of value. It took me awhile to get to the point where I was comfortable keeping players in a hand, building pots when it was right and keeping the pots small when it was appropriate.

You also have to see what the board texture is like. On certain draw-heavy boards, you may want to bet big and protect your hand. But when you have top pair on an uncoordinated, rainbow flop, there’s no reason to go crazy. ♠