Mike 'Timex' McDonald Poker Strategy

Mike 'Timex' McDonald is probably as close to the poker version of 'child prodigy' archetype as we're going to get. He won his first EPT title at the age of 18 and in 2014 after finishing in the second place at the PCA Main Event he narrowly missed his chance at becoming the first player to ever win two EPT titles (this title eventually went to the amazingly talented Victoria Coren Mitchell).

Timex is 27 years old now and while he doesn't have any WSOP or WPT titles to his name, his amazing EPT results combined with impressive online history and 28th place on the All Time Money List with more than $13,000,000 in tournament winnings, certainly place him among the best players in the game right now.

The Power of Patience

We're going to take a closer look at Mike McDonald's strategy using 15 minutes long YouTube compilation linked above. The first thing that springs to mind after watching it, is the fact that it only contains four hands while the compilations featuring other players would often contain one to three more hands in the same amount of time. The aptly named "Timex" likes to take his time, and his stoic demeanor at the poker table combined with signature death stares are perhaps one of the reasons for his success.

Preflop action in the first hand of the video was fairly standard. Seidel made a solid open raise and received two reasonable calls from Mike's 87s and John's J9s. Initial raiser understandably decided to slow down on a 6dJd5s board which allowed McDonald to take the betting lead and try to leverage his combination of pot and fold equity. Juanda elected to call with his top pair and backdoor draw.

Five of diamonds on the turn could've caused many other players to slow down but Mike recognized it for a great scare card that it was and decided to press the issue with another bet. McDonald blocked a bunch of draw combinations and given how wide John's pre-flop range should be, Mike was fairly comfortable putting him on a medium strength made hand, especially because he declined to raise the flop which he'd undoubtedly do with some monster made hands and combo draw.

A second hand comes from the aforementioned 2014 PCA Main Event which concluded with an epic head's up battle between Mike 'Timex' McDonald and polish pro Dominik Panka. The hand began with a slightly loose but solid open with 85c from McDonald and an equally solid 3bet with KTd by Panka. After Timex decided to call we saw the Ah4c9c board followed by a standard cbet by Dominik and another call by McDonald. Panka caught a second pair on the turn and decided to continue the aggression which was perfectly understandable in a heads up poker setting where could expect to get paid by many worse hands.

Jack of diamonds on the river made the spot considerably worse for Panka who decided to check and Timex jumped at the opportunity to turn his hand into a bluff. Even though Mike is still a young player, his tremendous amount of experience allowed him to figure out exactly where his opponent was in the hand and make a relative risk free, highly +EV bluff that Panka doesn't really have a great answer to in this particular spot given how it doesn't make much sense for him to slow down on the river with the top of his range and the medium part can't really stand the heat on this texture.

Hand number three featured a somewhat unorthodox cbet/3bet line with a top pair by Mike. After opening the button with KTo and making a standard value cbet on a Ks8c3s board Timex decided to go over the top of Schemion’s flop raise which tells us a couple of things. First of all Timex doesn't shy away from unusual lines if the situation calls for it, second of all he's able to make extreme adjustments based on table dynamics and table history given how depending on his opponent's strategy this might've been a value raise or even a stone cold bluff (with former being much more likely). Atypical lines like this cbet/3bet with the top pair are often what differentiates solid grinders from truly exceptional players.

And lastly, let's briefly talk about Daniel Negreanu's reaction to Mike's signature 'death stare' in the last hand. While some fans find McDonald's behavior annoying it's really hard to argue with the results and if you're able to fluster an experienced guy like Daniel - and score yourself an easy way out from a 3bet pot in the process - it's pretty obvious you're doing something right.