When I Was A Donk with Sean Yu

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.

Sean Yu earned his first World Series of Poker Circuit ring back in 2014, winning the Harrah’s main event for $101,881. He followed that up with a win at the 2014 WPT500 for $260,000, and at the 2015 L.A. Poker Open for $124,590. Yu then picked up another main event title in 2016, earning $170,286 at the WSOP Circuit stop at Planet Hollywood.

Last summer, he won his first gold bracelet in the Global Casino Championship at the Cherokee Casino in North Carolina for $296,941 and in September, he won the Commerce Poker Series for $209,030. In total, the L.A.-area resident has $1.6 million in career live tournament earnings.

Here, Yu talks about his struggles with preflop aggression.

“When I first started playing poker, I had a problem that I think a lot of players have, and that was calling too much. I don’t necessarily mean calling bets on the river, although I probably did that too much as well, but I mean calling preflop. Rather than come in with a raise or a three-bet and be aggressive, I was just calling and playing passively.”

“I started as a limit player back in 1996 when I was in the Marine Corps, and I really didn’t play no-limit until the mid-2000s. So I guess for that reason, it took me a little while to be more aggressive preflop, because in limit it’s very hard to get people to fold to a single raise.”

“I had a lot of the usual leaks. I would play too many hands, see too many showdowns and call people down light. I might even call someone down with ace high. You know, in limit hold’em sometimes ace high is good. (laughing)”

“Another thing is that I have to use the chips I do accumulate wisely. [If I’m in a tournament] and I build up a big stack early, I’m not using those chips just to coast to the later stages, and I’m not using them just to gamble, I’m using them to be a lot more aggressive and have leverage over the other players.” ♠