When I Was A Donk – James Mackey

James Mackey

James Mackey very quickly worked his way up the ranks of the online poker world, racking up nearly $4 million in winnings before making his presence felt in the live arena, taking down a World Series of Poker bracelet in a 2007 no-limit hold’em event for $730,740.

The 31-year-old also added World Poker Tour champion to his poker resume, besting the field at WPT Choctaw in 2016 for $681,758. The Kansas City, Missouri native has more than $3.7 million in live tournament earnings.

Here, Mackey talks about his complete disregard for bankroll management.

I was terrible at bankroll management when I first started playing. I think it was back in 2005, when I first started playing online poker, I didn’t follow any sort of guidelines for how many buy-ins I needed to play certain games. I just went for it.

I would basically just play as high as I could. As soon as I had enough cash to jump up to the next level, I did. I would have like three buy-ins for the games I was playing in. I went from 25¢-50¢ to $5-$10 in just a couple months.

Another problem is that I would use my tournament winnings to fund my jump up in stakes in the cash games. If I hit a big tournament score, I’d playing bigger cash games, even though I wasn’t ready for them. I’d play way too long, like 20-hour sessions, if I was stuck and was trying to win my money back.

I went broke a couple times along the way before I finally learned my lesson. At the time, I was just a broke college student. My only job before that was at McDonald’s, so I didn’t have the discipline yet.

These days I have enough money that I’m alright and don’t have to worry about it, but I also don’t really play the big stuff anymore. I remember back in 2008, I got second in the $10,000 eight-game event [at the WSOP] and immediately jumped into the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. event. I don’t even really play any mixed games, and I bubbled that, so it was a good lesson for me. ♠