When I Was A Donk With Joe Tehan

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.

Joe Tehan burst onto the live tournament poker scene in 2006 when he took down an event at the L.A. Poker Classic for $244,179. He followed that up with a win in the World Poker Tour Mandalay Bay main event for $1,033,440.

In 2010, he also won the North American Poker Tour Los Angeles main event for $725,000. In total, the New York native has earned nearly $4.5 million in live tournaments.

Here, Tehan talks about an infamous hand he played in 2011.

In 2011, in an Epic Poker League tournament, I made what some might consider to be a donk play. The hand got a lot of attention and was talked about for a while after, but I think most people ended up thinking of me as a donk. I look back at it and it still doesn’t look that bad to me, but maybe I’m wrong.

We were close to the money bubble with 14 players left, playing short-handed at a five-handed table. Only 12 made the money. It was a $20,000 buy-in, so it was a big bubble, something around $50,000. Faraz [Jaka] was short stacked and moved all-in, I think it was for like 15 big blinds.

Vanessa [Rousso] then min-raised, leaving herself with like another 45 big blinds behind. I’m in the big blind with 4-2. Now, I could just fold, but I knew that she didn’t want to bust in 13th, so I decided to move all-in and put a lot of pressure on her.

I thought in that spot, that she would be folding a lot of her range given how strong I look, while her dead money in the pot allowed me to basically freeroll against whatever random hand Faraz was holding.

She took a long time in the tank, but eventually she called with pocket queens. To make things worse, Faraz had pocket aces, so I looked even dumber with my 4-2. But then I paired my four on the flop, and turned trips to bust both of them. I ended up finishing third in the tournament for like $300,000.

But I have to say, if I was presented with that same spot today, with the exact same table dynamics, I think I would make the same play. I’ve always been a very aggressive player, even a little spewey, but it does pay off sometimes on the money bubble. This was a spot where I got caught and ultimately looked like a donk, but I think my reasoning was solid. My read on whether or not she would fold, was obviously wrong. (laughing) ♠