When I Was A Donk With Chip Jett

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.

Charles Jett, better known as Chip to the poker world, was a poker dealer and then a prop player before breaking out to win Best All-Around Player at the 2002 L.A. Poker Classic. During his career, Jett has also scored wins at the World Poker Finals, World Poker Open, California State Championship, Tropicana Poker Series, Grand Poker Series, and Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza.

Jett narrowly missed out on a few World Poker Tour titles, finishing second in the Party Poker Million, fourth in the Legends of Poker, and eighth at the Five Diamond World Poker Classic. He also has five WSOP final tables. The 43-year-old Scottsdale, Arizona native has more than $2.2 million in career tournament earnings.

Here, Jett talks about his first experience playing with legendary ten-time WSOP bracelet winner Doyle Brunson.

“When I think about mistakes I made in the past, one that comes to mind is a final table I made back in 2003 at the World Series of Poker. It was the [$2,000] H.O.R.S.E. event, and I found myself there with Doyle Brunson, (as well as Brian Haveson, David Plastik, Bill Gazes, and Scotty Nguyen.)”

“I had been around for a couple of years and had some good wins, but Doyle didn’t know who I was. For some reason, I got it in my head that because I was one of the unknown players at the table, that Doyle was going to make some kind of a move on me. I don’t know why, but that’s what was in my head at the time.”

“I’m a little sketchy on the details today, but I ended up getting into this huge Omaha eight-or-better pot with him, putting in like six bets preflop when we weren’t that deep to begin with. I had K-K-10-9 or something terrible like that, and of course he had A-A-2-3. For some reason, I just convinced myself that he was going to pick on me, and in reality, he was just playing his hand.”

“I went from being in the middle of the pack to the short stack, and I busted in seventh place. Doyle went on to win. I remember walking away from that final table being really disappointed with myself, but in the end, I guess I can say I was able to learn from it.” ♠