When I Was A Donk With Almedin Imsirovic

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.

Almedin ‘Ali’ Imsirovic is only 23 years old, but he’s well on his way to a bright future in poker after a lightning-fast rise up the tournament ranks. The Vancouver, Washington resident didn’t even start playing poker until 2015. In fact, he was playing the 2¢-5¢ tables online to cut his teeth.

His first taste of live success was a modest $11,181 win in a $360 buy-in at the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown. Now, about a year later, Imsirovic has inserted himself as a regular on the live tournament circuit. After making two final tables at the Venetian DeepStack Extravaganza in 2017, Imsirovic followed that up with three straight fourth-place showings in the WSOP Circuit, Five Diamond World Poker Classic and Card Player Poker Tour Venetian main event. Most recently, Imsirovic took down the $10,000 turbo event at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, banking $160,050.

Here, Imsirovic talks about the importance of following through on a play.

“There have been a lot of punts, to be honest, but that’s part of tournament poker. I remember an online tournament I was playing on PokerStars, maybe two years ago, and there was about $250,000 up top. There were 11 players left, and I think I was in second place. I ended up getting ninth or tenth place, so it was pretty brutal.”

“I had a spot come up, where I check-raised the turn as a bluff, and was planning on always shoving the river. But for some reason… well, it was the money. It was a lot of money to me at the time, and I ended up chickening out and checking it down. He ended up having a hand that was always going to fold, and I lost a huge showdown.”

“That was a huge lesson for me in following through, you know. If you can’t pull the trigger when you are supposed to, then don’t even bother with the hand in the first place. But if you do make a play, you can’t abandon it halfway through unless your read changes or a bad card comes.”

“I think about that hand from time to time when similar spots come up in tournaments. I tell myself that this is one of those times where I’m supposed to pull the trigger. It doesn’t always work out, obviously, but at least I went for it. The key is to throw away the results of the play, and just be proud that you made the right play at the right time. Once you make the play, you did your job, and you can’t let a bad outcome stop you from trying again in the future.” ♠