When I Was A Donk With James Gilbert

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.

James Gilbert won his World Series of Poker Circuit ring in 2012, taking down a no-limit hold’em event in Atlantic City for $50,106 to kick-start his career. The Bensalem, Pennsylvania-native continued to grind it out on the circuit and in 2014, he won the first event of the Borgata Fall Poker Open for $184,902. The very next year at the Borgata Spring Poker Open, Gilbert took third for another $97,558.

After a deep run in the 2015 WSOP main event, Gilbert returned to Borgata for the World Poker Tour main event, taking second for $434,598, the largest score of his career. Gilbert picked up another six-figure score in 2017, finishing third in a $1,500 bounty event at the WSOP. Most recently, he banked $326,565 for his runner-up showing at the WPT Seminole Rock’N’Roll Poker Open. In total, Gilbert has more than $1.8 million in live tournament earnings.

Here, Gilbert talks about a leak in his short-stack game.

“I would say for me it was it was a problem with shoving. I would open-shove way too many hands in late position. I was shoving with too many chips, and with way too wide of a range. I didn’t realize that later in the tournament, different circumstances dictate that you can and should raise/fold, because the chips are more important at that time.”

“I guess I would get into panic mode, and I definitely think that the more I played, the more I realized I didn’t have to panic. Really, I don’t know if there even is a panic zone anymore. I think players have gotten a lot better playing short-stacked, and just like also dealing with the variable outcomes in poker, like being short-stacked.”

“Before I think when people would get short and tell themselves they needed to be at 20 big blinds, or a three-bet folding stack. And nowadays it’s more about surviving than just trying to accumulate a certain number. People are more comfortable playing with less than ten big blinds, and you don’t see as many people punting off. It’s perfectly fine now to get down to five or six big blinds, depending on the situation.”

“Obviously, you want to win your early flips, build a big stack, and just run over the table. But sometimes the cards don’t cooperate, and you have to be patient. You can’t just throw away those valuable chips because you are uncomfortable playing short. You can’t panic.” ♠