When I Was A Donk: With Jake Balsiger

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.

Jake Balsiger was just a senior at Arizona State University when he made the final table of the World Series of Poker main event back in 2012. Although he went into the final table as the second-shortest stack, he managed to rebound and grind his way to a third-place finish for nearly $3.8 million.

The Tempe-based poker pro has since added another $1.2 million to his live tournament earnings, finishing third at the Aussie Millions, third at the Arizona State Poker Championship and fourth at a Venetian DeepStack Extravaganza main event
Here, Balsiger details his struggles as the table nit.

“When I first started playing, back in middle school believe it or not, I was a huge nit. I mean, I was the biggest coward when it came to poker. It took a really long time for me to open up.”

“I used to be berated so hard for being a nit. I still remember the first time I bluffed I actually picked it up and showed it to everyone. It was probably the first time I bet without a pair in six months of playing poker.”

“Another problem I had is that I would get very attached to hands. Maybe it’s because I never bluffed, but when I did get dealt a hand, I would make every excuse I could think of to not fold it. I would say things to myself like, ‘It’s so hard for them to have it,’ but looking back, it was obvious that they always had a set or whatever.”

“I would get into these spots with aces or kings, and be facing a lot of pressure, and I would just lose my whole stack because I somehow convinced myself that they had to be bluffing, when they very clearly were not. Especially against me, since I was the guy who never bluffed.”

“Eventually I realized that I needed to be more aggressive in order to get paid off, and that people don’t usually like to bluff the biggest nit at the table.” ♠