When I Was A Donk – Patrick Serda

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.

Canadian poker pro Patrick Serda first got the attention of the poker world in December of 2016, when he finished runner-up to William Kassouf in the EPT Prague €10,000 event. Kassouf infamously gave Serda an incredible deal to claim the title for himself, earning just €532,500 while Serda pocketed €719,000 for giving up the trophy. The Winnipeg-native then went on to win the 2017 WCOOP $10,000 High Roller for $469,191.

In November of 2018, Serda found himself heads-up for the WPT Montreal main event title with Ema Zajmovic, who had won the WPT event at the very same venue just one year earlier. On the final hand, Serda called down bets on every street with just third pair, eventually sniffing out a bluff that led to the title and the $668,388 first-place prize. Serda now has $1.7 million in career live tournament earnings.

Here, Serda thinks back to a missed opportunity in the World Series of Poker main event.

“I think the transition to live poker was very tough for me. Around 2013, I had some online success, and I was very comfortable playing quite a few tables. Honestly, I used to take every single spot, all the time. I never had a fold button back then. I still don’t have a fold button, but it’s much more controlled now.”

“I remember the very first time I played the WSOP $10,000 buy-in main event, I had made it to day 3. I built up a stack of about 300,000 and we were still not in the money. That didn’t happen until day 4 back then.”

“Anyway, back to the end of day 3, and there are four hands left. This kid with 380,000 opened from under-the-gun with a minraise to 8,000. I decided I wanted to bet the 8-7 suited to 24,000 from middle position. It came back to him and he made it 75,000.”

“I ended up telling myself that he could only call off with three hands. So I ripped it in… and he obviously had kings. I punted infinite equity.”

“It’s been a long process trying to learn how to control it more. I have flashbacks to spots where I had significant stacks in tournaments and just went for it a little too hard. Obviously sometimes it has worked out, but I don’t really remember those times. It’s the times when you punt off in big spots that stick out in your memory.”

“Nowadays I don’t punt off infinite equity, just because I can’t. I got a kid now and I have to pay for diapers, so that serves as a good reminder not to throw away those chips.” ♠