When I Was A Donk With Bryn Kenney

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.

Bryn Kenney started his career online, playing from his home in New York. After a series of ups and downs, he began to dominate the live tournament circuit, and has since amassed more than $5.4 million in earnings.

The 28-year-old is coming off the best run of his career. Last summer, he won his first World Series of Poker bracelet in the $1,500 10-Game Mix event. In December, he final tabled both the $100,000 buy-in World Poker Tour Five Diamond Alpha8 and the $50,000 buy-in Aria super high roller on the same night for scores of $323,730 and $343,000. Then, in January, he took third in the $100,000 buy-in PokerStars Caribbean Adventure high roller for $873,880, the largest score on his resume. In total, he has 16 six-figure cashes to his credit.

Here, Kenney explains why he is so driven to learn from his mistakes.

“I’ve always been very hard on myself, even back when I was mostly playing online. If I ever made a mistake, it was important for me to never make that same mistake again. I’m still like that, although I make a lot fewer mistakes today than I did when I was first starting out.”

“If I’m in a tournament and I get unlucky, then I have a much easier time letting it go, but if I do something that I know was incorrect, then I’m much more likely to dwell on it for a little while. Let’s say I make a call on someone with some top pair or overpair-type of hand on the river in a spot where I know I should be folding or even raising, then I’m going to be really upset with myself. It’s not just about making a good play, it’s about making the perfect play. It’s about being completely aware and on top of what’s going on at the table. I want to be in that zone every time I play poker.”

“The key is to go ahead and be tough on yourself, because ultimately that will lead to an improvement in your game, but you can’t sit with it for days and days. It’s very tough for poker players to let go sometimes and I’ve become a lot better recently with evaluating my play, learning from it, and then letting it go.”

“I still don’t want to make those same mistakes over and over again, but I’m not going let any negativity creep in. There’s no benefit to being upset at the table because it distracts you from the next hand." ♠