When I Was A Donk With Blake Bohn

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.

Blake Bohn started playing cash games in the ‘90s before transitioning to tournaments after the poker boom. The Savage, Minnesota-native has been a consistent winner ever since, starting his run with a win in the 2012 Running Aces Tournament of Champions.
The next year, he won the Chicago Poker Classic for $288,171 and narrowly missed out on a World Series of Poker bracelet, earning $281,049 for a runner-up finish in a $1,500 no-limit hold’em event.

Bohn then made back-to-back WPT final tables in September of 2014, and won the Iowa State Poker Championship the next year for $101,229. This year, Bohn took second in the April MSPT Shakopee main event for $67,203, before returning for the September event to win for another $94,776. In total, the Minnesota Poker Hall of Fame member has racked up more than $2.8 million in live tournament earnings.

Here, Bohn talks about the hand that has given him the most trouble.

“Honestly, I feel like I’ve had the same leak since the start of my career. I think I just love A-Q too much. I don’t know what it is, but I seem to have gotten into a lot of trouble with that hand over the years.”

“It’s kind of ridiculous that I’m still misplaying it as often as I do, because A-Q has cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years. It’s one of those hands I have to play, but then I’m up against A-K, or two queens or better. A-Q is a hand that looks a lot better than it actually is. Think about how much better A-Q looks to you than A-J, but it’s just one click away. For some reason, my brain sees A-Q and treats it more like a premium hand.”

“I’ve gotten better about playing it on the flop, in situations where I flop an ace and might be outkicked. Or on queen high flops when I might be up against an overpair. But interestingly enough, it’s the preflop situations that have burned me the most. I’ve burned a few 20 to 25-big blind stacks getting a little crazy with A-Q preflop, and that’s obviously something that needs to be corrected.”

“The good thing about this is that I don’t really think about A-Q like that when I’m playing. When I’m in the moment, there are no bad thoughts about A-Q. You hear bad players saying things like they don’t want pocket jacks because they always lose. That’s not me. Go ahead and deal me A-Q. I’ll take it. The cards don’t know, it’s all variance.”

“I just need to get better about being a little less aggressive with it preflop. There are spots, obviously, where I want to get it in, or apply maximum pressure, but I also need to recognize those spots where my A-Q is behind.” ♠