When I Was A Donk With Pratyush Buddiga

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.

Before becoming a successful poker pro, Colorado’s Pratyush Buddiga made headlines when he was crowned the Scripps National Spelling Bee champion at the age of 13. He had seemingly endless options after graduating from Duke University, but it was poker that kept his attention.

In the years since, Buddiga has racked up more than $6.4 million in live tournament earnings. In 2014, he took third in an APPT high roller for $844,660. In 2016, he won the EPT Barcelona €25,000 high roller for $780,011 and this year, he picked up his biggest score when he took sixth in the Super High Roller Bowl for $1 million.

Here, Buddiga talks about the mindset of a successful tournament pro.

I used to play way too tight, which is a little unusual for someone from an online background. I didn’t really understand the game at the time, so I was trying to emulate what I thought was the right way to play.

I didn’t bluff very much. In my mind, the way to be a proper poker pro was to avoid the variance, sit back and play tight, and wait to stack the fish. It was disciplined poker, basically.

But what I later realized is that you can’t beat other pros that way. In fact, you’ll just get completely run over, because the pros aren’t just sitting back and waiting, they are pushing small edges over and over again. I finally learned when to be more aggressive.

A lot of players will have guilt if they bust a tournament running a huge bluff. For some reason, people have no problem with their ‘standard’ bustouts, like if they run tens into A-Q for 20 big blinds or something like that. Yeah, that’s fine, but don’t forget to think about why you were down to 20 big blinds in the first place.

The guys who end up deep in tournaments all the time, are the guys who have the chips. They aren’t getting down to 15 big blinds and hoping to win a flip. That’s what separates the good players from the really great players.

The really great players don’t care if they bust and look foolish. They don’t mind if they go down swinging. They don’t need a ‘standard’ bustout story to tell their friends, they just make the best play they can make in a given situation. ♠