When I Was A Poker Donk -- Lars Bonding

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.

Lars Bonding is one of the most consistent and aggressive no-limit hold’em tournament players on the circuit today. The Danish poker pro started cashing in major tournaments back in 2005, and since then has accumulated nearly $2.4 million in career earnings.

The Las Vegas resident had been on one of the most impressive tears in the history of online poker earlier this year — all before online poker was widely shutdown in the United States. Over the course of a few months, he recorded two wins and a fourth-place finish in the $200 buy-in PokerStars Sunday Warmup, which had consistently drawn more than 4,600 entrants each week. The run netted him about $250,000.

In brick-and-mortar card rooms, Bonding has been equally as impressive. He finished second in a 2005 World Series of Poker event for $317,000, won a 2005 no-limit hold’em event at Bellagio for nearly $200,000, and just this summer went deep in the WSOP main event, finishing in 22nd place for a $302,000 payday. With all his years of success both in front of the computer and in brick-and-mortar casinos, he has cashed a massive 67 times.

Here, Bonding talks about his conscious decision to reduce how much he gambles in deep-stacked tournaments — all in an effort to pick and choose lower-variance spots instead of flipping a coin for a ton of chips. His new-found method has worked wonders for him recently.

Card Player caught up with him to discuss a leak he had in his game early in his career.

“I remember very vividly that the 2005 $25,000 World Poker Tour Championship was the first time I had ever played a live deep-stacked tournament. I won a $1,000 satellite, and I had no experience in deep-stacked formats. If I had top pair, top kicker, I was going all the way with it. The whole deep-stack aspect of poker caused me to make a ton of mistakes. I wasn’t sure how aggressive I needed to be and how much I needed to gamble in marginal situations. My play today is a little more balanced, as back then it was like, ‘close your eyes and bet.’ With that being said, poker has changed a lot, making it difficult sometimes to compare your play from different points in time.

“However, I was gambling more when I was young, and sometimes I miss that. When I describe my play now as conservative, it’s really just my way of being conservative; it’s compared to the old style that I evolved from. If you ask some other players right now, they probably wouldn’t say I’m conservative. You have to be thoughtful about your play and be willing to make adjustments. I wasn’t good when I started. We all have been at some beginning stage of a poker career. We all probably gambled too much in certain situations at one point.

“For getting better, I would advise practice, practice, and more practice. It sounds boring, but if you ask me, that’s what it takes to develop a patient mindset in tournaments. My recent results have come after a period in which I put in a ton of hours online and really got a better feel for the game. For a period at the end of 2010, I kept getting close in a lot of different tournaments, but I didn’t seem to be able to close them down. I changed my approach a little in the endgame, and I built in a little more patience in my game, trying not to gamble as much. It’s something I’m always working on.”

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