Coping with loss

Week 1 is in the books and I broke even.

Week 1 breakdown:

Sounds shit, but I got off to a terrible start earlier in the week at Manchester G where I think I played well but ran badly and suffered a fairly substantial loss. I am obviously aware this is going to happen but it doesn't make it any less frustrating (cue the 'that's poker' comments) but it serves to highlight what I wanted to talk about this week and that's coping with loss.

A logical mind will quickly realise that it is impossible to win at poker every time. Most people who play the game are reasonably intelligent and also know this fact to be true. You are constantly up against probability and skilled, deceitful opponents and all we can do is attempt to put our money in +EV spots against our opponent's perceived ranges and hope for the best. We all know this, yet how many people know a local reg who constantly complain about 'fish' playing badly and 'you'll never guess what he called my 3bet with preflop...' etc. I can picture a couple now and sometimes I wonder how I keep a straight face when they are discussing the 'fish' and their play. Why are people surprised when calling stations call and fish play badly preflop? Why are people upset at calling stations calling and fish playing badly preflop - surely this is a fantastic spot for us to be in?

 It all boils down to mental approach and the ability to think logically in emotional, adrenaline fuelled situations.

I'm sure some of these regs are competent players who have the technical skills to be decent players, however they will never achieve much in the game as they cannot cope with loss. Working at making variance your bitch is something we should all be striving towards as it makes is better players and better human beings.
Here's some strategies I use to help deal with bad beats and cope with loss:
1. Say 'nice hand' to your opponent -  Mentally this helps me to move onto the next hand without resentment towards the villain who just got lucky.
2. Disect the hand after your session - Don't sit and stew about the hand there and then. Your focus needs to be on the next hand, not the previous one. People and variance will not go easy on you just because you had a bad beat last hand.
3. Don't panic - reload and start again. Poker is a never ending game and there will always be another hand.
4. Don't be results orientated - just because you lost one hand doesn't mean you played it badly, nor does it mean you are 'cursed' or your opponent is a fish. You might have played it badly, but see point 2!
5.  Recognise signs of tilt - I cannot stress how important this is. If you are tilting, go home or turn the computer off. It is the single biggest leak in anyone's game and the good players are very adept at spotting when someone is steaming and adjusting their ranges accordingly. Tilt is a personal, emotional response and I cannot tell you how to spot when you are tilting because it is different for everyone. The way I spot when I am tilting is when my protocol for decision making goes astray. I have a set pattern of things I do before I make a decision (eg: Who's opened, stack size, position, hand I have etc......) and when I'm tilting I just throw the chips in and see what happens on the flop. The first step in dealing with tilt is recognising it!

I will say here before I get abuse that I am human and sometimes the system breaks down. I am not faultless at the mental side of the game no matter how many times I claim to be a mental game ninja - it's a work in progress. No-one is a robot and as human beings we are all susceptible to allowing emotions to cloud our judgement. The key to mental strength is to limit this or more importantly, recognise it when it is happening and deal with it positively!

So back to Manchester G earlier in the week. I played for about 7 hours and after the final bad beat I could feel myself starting to tilt so I picked up my stuff and headed for the car. I was not prepared to risk any more of my roll when my decision making process was compromised. What I will say is that the game was juicy and definitely worth travelling for and I'll certainly be heading back there shortly to give it another go. The long and short of it is this:  I suffered a loss, but it doesn't make me a bad player or make my decision to leave my job wrong. It means I suffered a loss.

Had a good think about the session on the drive home and on Wednesday morning. I analysed spots, put opponents on ranges, calculated odds, ran a couple of things through poker stove and after this careful, analytical process I came to the following well thought out conclusion.

Variance is a bitch.

Thinking long term, I'm pleased with my response to the tough situation and pleased with my mental strength in adversity.

I managed a second place in a small comp at the Blackpool G Wednesday night (wp Sir @Mike Thomas) and followed that up with two solid wins in local NL games and a small loss in a dealers choice game on Saturday to finish the week level. I bricked a comp on the Sunday night but won the buy-in during the break in a  cash game so no harm done!

Week 1 of my new career and I broke even - and I'm ok with that!

The week ahead

Lots of good stuff happening this week. Firstly, starting tonight I am attempting the Genting Poker Speed Challenge. Basically, you play speed poker on the Genting skin for 24 hours and they calculate points based on Raked Hands/Total Hands x Hands won. The winner gets a £1k package to the GPS of their choice. Currently, NoCash is smashing it after a monster session on Saturday. He appplied the 'sex,drugs and rock/roll' approach (porn, pro-plus and Ipods......). I'm going for the more scientific approach - I will be drinking plenty of water and eating a lot of fruit and slow release carbs like granola etc. I'm taking no stimulants although I will probably drink some black coffee. I'm also going to schedule regular, shorter breaks where I will either walk around the block or shower to try and shake off some of the cobwebs. I do fully intend to play the entire 24 hours and am weirdly looking forward to it. I'll probably feel different this time tomorrow when I'm 10 hours in! I'll be posting an update thread on RaisetheRiver and AWOP so feel free to follow me and offer support (AWOP) and abuse (RTR) throughout.

From Thursday next week it's the Stoke GPS, a £440 buy-in comp guaranteed at 100k. I qualified for this in an online satellite earlier in the year and am really looking forward to it. It will be my first away trip since retiring from teaching and my first bigger buy-in MTT for a while. I'm playing day 1b on Friday and am staying over from Friday to Sunday. It's going to be very well attended and I'm sure there will be juicy cash games if I bust early followed by the Anniversary Cup (£150 with 6k added turbo) on Sunday. Would be fantastic to get a draw early on but I'm sure it will be a tough field. I'm looking forward to the challenge and hoping to be on the right side of variance!

Feel free to follow me on twitter (@awesome_hutch)/facebook and message me in any questions which I'll answer honestly and frankly.

Ky

GG Education

Well, it's all over. My 8 year career as a Science teacher has come and go and I'm beginning my new life as a full-time degenerate gambler.

It's been a torrid last few weeks with so many loose ends to tie up and having to deal with the emotional part of leaving a job that I am so invested in. However, that's the decision I made months ago and I feel proud that I did not compromise or let my standards drop over the final term. The hardest part of leaving has definitely been some of my pupils getting upset and seeing my decision as a personal slight on them. Dealing with 'perceived rejection' is hard for anyone, but add in the hormonal rollercoaster these teenagers are going through and you get the following equation (#lovemaths):

                                  Teacher leaving + teenagers + hormones = shitloads of tears.


I'm so grateful to the friends I have in the poker community who have been so supportive of me. A big thank you to Fistby, Doublebubble and Kav who offered me plenty of well wishes and support and occasionally NoShoes who managed to mix in his standard obnoxious insults with some well wishes. I repaid these guys by turning up after double figures in pints of Guinness Friday night at the local £25 donkament at the Blackpool Circus. I didn't last long - both pokerwise and liver wise. GG.

I fit in some poker over the weekend after shaking off the hangover at the Bolton GUKPT festival Saturday and Sunday. My recent tournament form has been ok and I've binked two live comps since my last blog. I bust the £50 turbo fairly early on the Saturday but went deep in the £75 bounty on the Sunday, making the final two tables before busting my big stack in unfortunate, but standard fashion. Felt I played well in spots but did miss value in others. My tournament game is rusty tbh, I'm feeling a bit unsure about people's shoving and calling ranges which I'm usually pretty good at when I'm playing my A game.  Was nice to meet a few of the regs up there again, including Disco, Topping and Si Cawley and I'm sure I'll be seeing more of these guys over the upcoming months. Was also encouraging to see Paul 'Cinders' Worsely and Dave Wearing win big in the £250 and £500 ME respectively. Couldn't happen to two nicer guys (except me obv). I managed a couple of hours on the cash games where I felt far more at home and grinded out a couple of smallish wins without incident.

Looking forward to grinding the local cash games and I've started a thread on AWOP (http://www.aworldofpoker.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=33106&p=336681#p336681 ) for people to speak up for their local games. I do want to travel a bit so I can try out the different casinos and the cash games they offer. I think we get a poor deal as cash game players as tournaments are (nearly)always well publicised and often have added value, but the cash games get nothing like that. The G have recently dropped their rewards points to 60p an hour and you only get these if you specifically ask for your card to be activated. We bring in far more money in rake to the casinos than the tournaments and it would be nice if they recognised this occassionally and offered us some added value. Please speak up on the thread for your local games and we can generate our own resources of the games in the NW that are running.

I'm going to be aiming to update this blog every Monday now and feel free to post or tweet me any questions and I'll do my best to answer them honestly. I received a question this week on twitter from @adam_mackay1  which was pretty tough to answer in 140 characters or less. His question was ,

'What rate do you figure you need to win at to beat the rake in a live 1/2 game?'.

This is obviously a question I've given a fair amount of thought to and is integral to my decision to give up my job. It's also a very difficult question to answer for a number of reasons. Online pros can consult the HEM databases and calculate all kinds of figures from their huge number of hands that can be used to work out hourly win rates or win rates per 100BB. It's very difficult to do that in a live scenario and its also difficult to get a sample size big enough for it to mean anything. I do keep stringent records of my play in live cash games and I tend to record per session rather than per hour. Other factors that make it difficult are tables are very varied in their hands per hour, their rake and the players playing. Three bits of advice I will offer are:
1. Keep records that allow you to compare different casinos/games (ie games, location and wins/losses).
2. Use these records to 'table select'. Pick the games which are best for you and avoid the ones you think are toughest.
3. To avoid being results orientated, record how you think you played as well. Give yourself a mark out of ten, or ABCDE or anything you're comfortable with. Its something Jared Tendler advocates in his Mental Game of Poker that has become my bible.

Without going into specific figures, the rake is definitely beatable but it is 100% better to push casinos for session fees rather than rake wherever possible.

Finally, a plea from me to all casino players. Over the weekend at Bolton, I saw 7 different people walking out the toilet without washing their hands. This is just unacceptable - you will be returning to the tables and handling the chips and cards that everyone else is! On our hands we have huge numbers of bacteria and other micro-organsims anway, but after urinating this number doubles according to the Food Standards Agency!  I googled this stat when writing this blog :

'A case-control study of 6,080 school children showed that those who regularly washed their hands after using the toilet during the day, in addition to normal hand cleaning habits, experienced 20% fewer absences due to illness.'

An absolute no-brainer and something we should all be doing!

Thanks for taking the time to read and feel free to ask any questions that I can try and answer in my blog next week.

#Nearlylivepro

Apologies for the lack of updates recently, life has been hectic and I do like to spend a bit of time on these blogs to make sure my thoughts are expressed clearly. Having said that, it's been nice these past few weeks to have people asking me when the next update of my blog is going to be (big shout out to my #1fan Carl the drunk!) Here's the latest state of play :

Teaching 

Still grinding the day job - there are 4 weeks left of the term to go and I am determined to not be one of these people turning up and just doing enough to get by. This means I'm working harder than ever and I'm going to leave on a high. I will admit to finding it difficult from an emotional persepective as most of my pupils know I'm leaving now and some are finding this upsetting. Its very difficult to deal with but I will obviously approach things as professionally as I can. I'm dreading the last week of term - I'm not sure I'll enjoy the attention and fuss that comes with leaving a school like mine!

2. Live cash games

Not put in quite the volume I hoped for because of the pressures of work however things are still going well. Finished May with good numbers profit wise and I'm on course for a solid June, although if I'm honest I feel a bit less sharp than I did earlier in the year. I do wonder if I'm spreading myself a bit thin by playing NL, PLO and dealers choice and it may be in my best interests, certainly in the short term, to concentrate on NL. Its still my best game and I am 100% sure I have a decent edge over most players locally playing deeper stacked games, particularly post flop.

3. Live Tournaments

Complete, abject failure on this front. I've played several tournaments recently, including the £150 deepstack in Nottingham, the Sky Poker tour event in Blackpool and a couple of local £50ers and I've both played and ran poorly. Its a dangerous positive feedback loop - the worse I run, the worse I play. The worse I play, the higher variance I expose myself to and therefore, in my mind, the worse I run. Being stuck in this emotional loop is clouding the decision making process and has resulted in me overplaying hands and making poorly timed moves. I've spent a bit of time talking to a couple of people about this and  couple of things seem clear to me.

1. I'm playing too many hands over aggressively - I think this is a symptom of playing so many hours in live cash games, where predominantly tight is right. As a consequence of this, when I sit down in the tournaments I feel I need to play more aggressively and as a consequence of this I'm trying to force the pace all the time. The cure to this, in my mind, is simple -  clearer focus and trusting my own instincts rather than thinking 'I've got 18BB so it's 3bet squeeze time'. Poker is not a formulaic game and every table of every tournament is different and I need to think more clearly about individual situations rather than what the internet says is the correct play.

2. I must spend more time working on my mental game in tournaments. Little things seem to aggravate me causing me to make poor decisions. Losing flips seem like the end of the world and bad players making bad plays surprises me. It's odd because in the cash games, these don't seem to bother me at all! I think it stems from entitlement tilt - I believe subconsciously I deserve to win and deserve to 'not get unlucky' which is of course pure nonsense. I'm going to try and put a few things in place before the next tournament I play in terms of mental strategy rather than poker strategy.

(a) Re-read the relevant chapters in 'The Mental Game of Poker' .
(b)  A couple of 'injecting logic' statements on my phone ( a strategy I used a lot last year when going through the worst downswing of my career to date) I picked this up from Jared Tendler's book and its such a simple, yet effective thing to do. Basically, its using simple statements like 'Losing a flip does not mean you're cursed' to use logic to cut through the red mist as the tilt descends.
(c) Use my breaks better - getting some fresh air, reading a  book, basically just getting away from the poker area and players discussing bad beats etc. There seems to be a lot of negativity in Blackpool around these break times and I'm sure its not helping my entitlement tilt to hear the bad beat stories and 'That fucking idiot just called me preflop with 25' etc etc

Hopefully these things will help me work through these mental issues and play my A game a higher % of the time than I currently am.



So there it is - again apologies for the lack of recent updates and I'm currently working on a longer post related to my goals and aspirations for next year.

I'm nearly there, 4 weeks to go until I need a new hashtag on twitter (@awesome_hutch).

Thanks for taking the time to read and feel free to hit me up on twitter, facebook or on raisetheriver or AWOP.

No man's land

Since my last post I've done the decent thing and handed my notice in 'officially' at work. It is a real wrench to leave the school - I love teaching and I'm lucky enough to work at a great school and with great people. However, it's also very exciting and I can't wait to get started on the next phase of my life.

I've agreed to work until the end of the Summer Term which is only fair to the pupils in my classes. This does leave me in a bit of quandry poker wise - I'm desperate to put in more volume and play more but am finding it difficult to because of work commitments. Without going into financial specifics its almost difficult to justify going to work at the moment - the games in Blackpool are rocking and there are so many tours, events and festivals that I want to attend and play but can't because of work.

It's extremely frustrating as I don't feel I'm a poker player nor a teacher - I'm stuck in a kind of stasis that I'm terming No Mans Land. I've come flying out the trenches of teaching and am desperately trying to cross the gap to the poker world on the other side, but the quagmire in between is draining my strength and preventing me doing either thing as successfully as I'd want to!

I think logic should overide passion here and my focus has to be on teaching until the end of July. I'm going to continue to grind when I can live and had a couple of nice results over the last week. I played and binked a £50 live donkament last weekend at the new poker room in the Paris casino and this weekend I've been away playing the Grand Prix at DTD in Nottingham. I bust the comp in redic fashion but the cash games were good to me and I booked a solid win in a very passive £2/£2 PLO game. I also managed a decent win in the local £2/£2 dealers choice game Saturday night to add to the growing bankroll. It all adds up to me booking a £2k win overall for April - not bad for a part-time amateur player (especially as my first game this month left me in a £1k hole!).

My aims between now and July are to just continue to play where I can and add to the bankroll wherever possible. I've put the online side of poker on hold for now until I have more time to plan which games to specifically target and prepare myself for the rigours of online play.

The mind of a live player

This is a transcript of my mental ramblings during a hand I played live recently. At the start of the hand I had about £250 in front of me and the game is £1/£2 NL. Its a standard lol live lineup - a couple of shortstackers looking to get lucky, a couple of drunks and one or two solid, winning players grinding out a few quid. UTG in this hand has just had a bit of a beat vs one of the shortstackers and is in full steam ahead mode. He has about £300 in front of him and has just ordered a lot of alcohol of the valet.

These are the thoughts that were growing through my mind during the hand almost verbatim.

'Haha, what a dick. He's lost £20 in a standard spot and he's losing his rag. I've got the button here, lets see if I can get him before he spews it to someone else. WTF... £28? Wtf with the 14x open....... ok. Pass, Pass, call and leaving himself £12 behind wp dickhead. Pass, pass lets have a look. AJ of diamonds.......Call or 3bet, call or 3bet. I've got the button and he's steaming but I want to stack him, so flat this and force him to play deep against me out of position.
 'Call.... OK, both blinds pass.

Where the fuck is my coffee, Jesus.

Flop 7c8d9d.

Bingo.......... if he bets here I'm going to stick it right... check. Fuck. Shortie all in for his £12, wp preflop imbecile. OK, lets think. UTG steamer got big stack but looks disinterested. He's showing the guy next to him his hand, he must have AK/AQ something and hating flop. I lose him if I raise, I'll flat and hope he comes along 'for value' and tilt pay me off if I make my hand.

'Call'

Yep, he's ranting its only £12, how can I pass. Perfect.

Turn 2d.

Delicious. Please have the K or Q diamonds under there. Thats it, have a look. OK, he looks interested, we could be in business here. He's checking very dramatically, reckon my read is spot on. I'll bet something small, and try and build a side pot for if the diamond hits so I can try and get stacks in. I'm sure he's got one big diamond. Sizing important here, price him in don't scare him off. Pots about £120, I reckon £25.

Call. Perfect............ now put the fucking diamond out there. Stop tapping me on the shoulder during the hand FFS, piss off. I'll talk to you later you fuc......

4d.

Smoking, now how do I get stacks in here. Should I just shove or bet to induce.Whats the right bet size to induce him to........... oh, he's already all in.

'I call, I've got the nuts. Unlucky mate'.

Ship it - HOW MUCH FUCKING RAKE ARE THEY TAKING AND WHERE IS MY COFFEE?


I'm a very troubled man who likes coffee obv.

Thanks for taking the time to read. Feel free to leave a comment and hit me up on twitter if you want to discuss the hand or my thought processes.

Evolution

In February last year I managed to ship the now defunct Blackpool Megastack £100 tournament (even sweeter I stacked NoCash in the final!). Before you switch off thinking this is a blatant brag post, just bear with me.

At the end of the tournament I did my usual facebooking and tweeting about how everyone sucked and about how awesome I was. It's all said in jest and just for shits and giggles, but little did I know that karma was waiting round the corner for me. Following that tournament I didn't book a winning live session for 3.5 months. Not a single one! I was playing cash games, tournaments, NL, PLO, dealers choice...... I'd have played anything to try and break the downswing! I couldn't win a flip, every draw was getting there vs me and my draws were bricking left right and centre. I begun to get into really bad habits, playing boards in ways to try and minimise variance rather than maximising EV. I was playing very passively preflop, scared of getting into flips or 60/40s as I knew I was 'cursed' and 'couldn't ever win' any of these hands.

I was very down on the game, myself and was on the verge of quitting and finding a new hobby. Fortunately for me, I'm lucky enough to know some quality people in the game who I can talk to about things and gain perspective. I'm also extremely lucky to have such a wonderful, nurturing home life to fall back on and make me feel better about myself. I spent a lot of time analysing my game, trying to 'break the curse' that I thought had fallen on me.

I am not a religious man, never have been really. As a Scientist I am a big believer that we are just very little people on a very little rock flying though an infinitely big universe. I do not believe that whichever God you choose to believe in created life. I am a firm believer that life evolved and by the process of natural selection inched its way forward, changing slowly and gradually until it became an overweight, balding bloke sat in his dressing gown writing a blog on a laptop. Natural selection, for those of you who don't know, is based on the principles of 'survival of the fittest' - certain members of a species gain an advantage over the population and pass these advantages onto their offspring who in turn do the same and so on and so on. The rest of the population either adapt or they die.....simples.

I don't think there is a better analagy for poker then this. Making a career in poker really is 'Survival of the fittest'. You either adapt, evolve and survive or your bankroll becomes extinct. Last year's downswing for me was my moment in time where I either adapted or became extinct. I made a conscious decision to engage my horrendous attitude towards the game and do something positive about things. In short, I bought a book.

If you haven't read this book and want to be successful in poker, read it. Then read it again. Then read it again. It changed my attitude towards my game immeasurably and helped to resolve the deep rooted mental game issues I had developed and tortured myself with.

I began to put some of the suggestions in the book into practice and I think the big turning point for me was a cash game session I had during the APAT World Championships at DTD last August. I had had a solid week, coming third in the HU comp and putting several solid winning cash game sessions together. Also, a couple of heavy morale boosting drinking sessions had taken place and life was good. NoCash was crushing the ME and I had sat down, with a NoCash inspired hangover to play some £0.50/1 NL to pass the time until he was done. Within about an hour I was 5 buy-ins (£500) down. I hadn't played a hand badly or been coolered, I was just having one of those horrible runs of cards we all experience from time to time. Two months earlier and I would have ranted, raged called my opponents retards and the poker Gods cunts. Basically, I'd have done all the things mental game fish do. In that moment of time, I didn't do any of this; I calmly reloaded and proceeded to play in exactly the same way and 4 hours later I was out of the 5BI hole I'd dug. As NoCash continued to crush, I continued to play my A game in the cash game and by the time Nocash had reached the final table, I'd booked a nice win. MBN to also have 10% of the reigning APAT World Champ as well!

This session gave me belief in my game and belief in my mental strength. Its a fond memory I draw on when times at the felt are tough and I need to inspire myself.

It was the moment I came splashing out the water and used my fins on the land.

It was the moment I evolved.

8 months later, I can honestly say I have not tilted in a cash game. I don't win every session obviously, nobody does but its not the most important thing for me anymore. Whats more important for me is not the monetary result of a session but how I played during the session. I keep stringent records of my wins/losses in terms of money and in terms of what level game I think I played. I am brutally honest with myself and continue to work hard on my game at every opportunity I have.

This mental strength and positive approach to my game has been the final straw that has tipped the balance in my difficult decision I described in my last blog.

The decision has been made and I have officially handed in my notice at work today. At the end of this term, I will no longer be a Science teacher, I will be the fish that has crawled onto land and attempted to pick up the playing cards in front of him.

Thanks for taking the time to read, feel free to hit me up on twitter (@Awesome_Hutch) if you want.

Next blog post will be something completely different, stay tuned.

Beginnings and future?

Like a lot of people, I got into poker by seeing it on TV. Watching Late Night Poker, I was intrigued by these larger than life characters playing what to my naive eye looked like snap! It didn't take me long to realise that there was a lot more going on here than I first thought. As a young boy, I played chess to quite a high level and I appreciated the thought processes that were going into the decisions. I also liked the bluster and the banter.

I downloaded Pacific Poker (remember them?) the next day and played some play money games. I tentatively made a small deposit and played a £2.50 STT and won. The adrenaline buzz from pressing a few buttons was indescribable and I was hooked.

Next weekend I went to Blackpool Grosvenor as it was called then and played a £5 rebuy tournament. It was fast and furious and I had very little idea what was going on and I sat quiet just watching the carnage that was taking place. Eventually I got dealt AK, and just like on TV put in my 3x raise. I got 8 callers. The flop come Ace high - fantastic! I bet my remaining 550 chips and got 5 callers. Unbelievably my hand stand up and I'd raked my first live pot. The adrenaline was coursing through my veins now and I quickly got into the swing of it. I eventually cashed 5 hours later for £110 and am proud to say that I have never played poker with my own money since.

This was about 2005 although my memory is a little hazy. I have been playing live poker ever since then as a hobby and am proud to say I have never had a losing year. I am constantly thinking about poker and spend a fair amount of my time striving to improve and analysing my play.

Part of the reason I decided to start writing a blog was I feel I am at a crossroads in my poker career. It has always been a hobby for me but for the past year it has become a far more important source of income for me and my family. I have never 'built a bankroll' and have always spent my winnings on my family and home once they had accumulated. I paid for my wedding, honeymoon, home improvements and holidays using money won at the tables but I have come to realise that I will never progress in the poker world with this attitude to bankroll management. Like I said in my opening post, I want to be winning bigger buy in tournaments and playing bigger cash games and this will never happen if poker remains a hobby for me.

This year I have not spent a single penny of my poker earnings.

Not a single penny.

Shortly, my wife and I will be making a decision. The two options are:
1. Do the sensible, safe thing and keep poker as a hobby. Continue to play at weekends and make a few quid here and there whilst maintaining the sensible, safe teaching career.
2. Go all in. Fuck the job off, use the growing bankroll and chase the dream.

I am genuinely torn between the two and no decisions have yet been firmly made. History tells me I am a winning player, but am I winning enough to support my family? My teaching career is solid, reliable and at times, rewarding. I often become frustrated with being unable to play tournaments due to work commitments but show me a poker player who hasn't felt that! This is not a decision I am taking lightly and I feel whatever I decide it will be clouded by a tinge of regret.

That being said, it's exciting.

Thanks for taking the time to read. Follow me on twitter @Awesome_Hutch and feel free to message me with comments.

Introduction - all about me!

Poker is a game ridden with cliches and bullshit. You've all heard the people at the table spouting shit like 'chip and a chair', and ' I'm priced in, too much value'. I guess to a certain extent I am one of those cliches.

My name is Ky Hutchinson and I am a poker wannabe. I want the fame, riches and bracelets poker promises. I want the sponsorships and the TV deals. I want to play in the biggest tournaments and cash games the world offers. I want to be the player people are talking about on forums and in casinos throughout the world.

This is my blog and I plan to document my journey in the poker world in the upcoming years. I will try my best not to be the cliche I described earlier but secretly I think that's what we all want.

Thanks for taking the time to read and I hope that you will enjoy my thoughts on the game.

Feel free to follow me on Twitter ( @Awesome_Hutch)and facebook (Ky Hutchinson)