When I Was A Donk – Linda Johnson

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.

Linda Johnson was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 2011, becoming just the second woman to receive the honor. Dubbed “The First Lady of Poker” by Mike Sexton, Johnson has spent more than four decades in the game and seen if from every possible angle.

As a player, Johnson became the third woman to ever win an open event at the World Series of Poker. As an advocate for player and dealer rights, she helped found the Tournament Director’s Association, serving on the board. She also helped start the World Poker Tour, working as the studio announcer for the first six seasons. These days, Johnson is a partner with Card Player Cruises and just last year, she received the inaugural WPT Honors Award.

Here, Johnson talks about how she managed her bankroll when she was playing for a living.

“I think my biggest problem was money management. Back in the ‘80s, I was playing poker for a living, and I did keep good records. I could see that I was making mistakes with money management.”

“After analyzing my records, I noticed that when I happened to lose, I would lose a lot of money compared to what my average win was. It was something like three or four times the amount of my average win.”

“Obviously, I was having more winning sessions than losing sessions, but I had to come to terms with the fact that I didn’t play well when I was losing. So I implemented a stop-loss for myself. If I managed to lose more than one and a half times my average win, I would stop playing that day. Only if there were special circumstances, like a particularly good lineup of players, would I stay in the game.”

“Some players can get stuck a few buy-ins and still maintain the same level of play for hours and hours, but I think most players have a tendency to chase their losses and when you do that, things can spiral out of control quickly. I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone, but in my case, I didn’t want to have to work three or four days just to make up for one bad session.”