When I Was A Donk With Jordan Young

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.

Jordan Young was just a teenager when he decided that he wanted to pursue poker for a living, and the Muskegon, Michigan-native quickly became a top-ranked online player under the name ‘Jymaster11’. Young has since gone on to cash for more than $5.6 million online, which includes a second-place finish in the 2016 PokerStars SCOOP (Spring Championship Of Online Poker) main event for $557,646.

The Solve For Why Academy partner hasn’t had as much success in the live arena, although he is coming off of one of his best years on the circuit. In early 2017, Young won the Mid-States Poker Tour main event at the Venetian for $117,381, and he followed that up with a runner-up performance in a $1,500 no-limit hold’em event at the World Series of Poker for another $242,160.

Here, Young talks about a big mistake he made at the final table of a 2011 WSOP event.

“I got a punt for you. A huge punt. I was at the final table of a huge $1,500 event at the WSOP, one of those tournaments with $750,000 for first place. I came into the final table, maybe third or fourth in chips, and I ran A-K into aces right away.”

“I only had 55,000 left with blinds of 25,000-50,000, and I somehow run it all the way back up to more than 2 million. I won seven all-ins in a row, just an incredible comeback from one big blind all the way up to chip leader.”

“We still had ten players left when I just committed ICM (Independent Chip Model) suicide. Foster Hays, who winds up winning the event, shoved for about 1,100,000 from the hijack, and I was on the button with A-10 offsuit. I ended up shoving over the top, and lost a flip to pocket sixes.”

“We had been playing for five or six hours at that final table and nobody busted, so the stacks were getting shallow. There was no reason, as the chip leader in that situation, to risk more than half of my stack in what was a coinflip situation. I should have just folded, and used those chips to put pressure on the rest of the shallower stacks who were looking to move up the pay jumps. Instead, I lit hundreds of thousands of dollars on fire.”

“I just didn’t pay attention to things like that back then. I was known online for finishing first or fourteenth, with not much in-between. But in this situation, it was a very costly lesson as I ended up busting in ninth place, which was especially painful after making that earlier comeback. (Note: He cashed for $54,936)” ♠