First things first, this is NOT a poker strategy blog. Card Player has some professionals named Brunson, Hellmuth, Negreanu, and a cast of others who can fill your needs in that department. If you want to know how to play suited connectors in a nine-handed no-limit hold'em game preflop from late position, with a raise in front of you, stop right here.
Do not pass go, do not collect $200.
So why would ever want to read this blog? Well - while I am not a high-stakes cash game professional, or an online tournament phenom, I have been at more major tournament final tables in the past two years than any one professional poker player.
It is my job to report on professional poker players, and the tournaments they play in for Card Player Magazine. My name is Ryan Lucchesi, and my day's are filled with reporting on the largest and most prestigious poker tournaments in the world, in a never-ending pursuit to bring tournament poker to you, the reader. That is not always as glamorous as it may sound (the running joke among the media is that while we always make it to the end of a tournament, it always feels like we bust out on the money bubble), but it has awarded me a rich bankroll of poker stories.
This blog is about life on the road in tournament poker. Poker players travel the nation and the world during the course of the year - in chase of big tournaments, big cash games, and ultimately - big riches. There is much more to life on the road than what happens during individual hands or during the context of a tournament day though. A lot can happen when the biggest casinos in the world are a place you call home - a lot can happen traveling tens of thousand of miles in the course of a year - and a lot can happen when you mix these ingredients with one of the most outrageous cast of characters that competitive sport has to offer. Life on the road is what this blog is all about.
Poker has always been a game of big personalities. The cast of characters that travel the tournament circuit are a writer's dream. While the will to improve our game by watching the professionals play for millions of dollars may guide us to the WSOP, WPT, High Stakes Poker, and many other shows, it is the characters that compel us to keep watching. You can only watch the classic, Big Slick vs. small pocket pair coin-flip so many times before it begins to lose its luster. Personalities are what will sustain poker's popularity. During an era where corporate sponsors have turned professional athletes in major professional sports into public relations drones that spout standard, scripted responses like, "We gave a 110 percent out there," or, "I give all the credit in the world to the other team's defense today," poker players are still themselves - for better or worse. They speak their minds, and the result is often times, highly entertaining.
Entertainment is the goal of this blog. I will be your eyes and your ears on the road. The blog will feature elements of a sports column, anecdotes from the road, and (tall) tales about the game. The stories that develop away from the table can be just as stirring as those that develop during a tournament, and thanks to the limitless production space on the Internet; this is the place where those stories will live. Mark Twain first popularized tales from the road in American popular culture in correspondence letters he wrote during his newspaper days in silver boomtown Nevada, and they have been a unique staple of the American dialogue ever since. While I do not claim to be as humorous as Twain, or as generation-defining and insightful as Jack Kerouac (to which the name of this blog owes its name, in homage to his classic road novel). I do claim to bring you my personal perspective as I chronicle a unique environment each and every week from the road.
Up Next: Things get kicked off with a bang in Part I of Monte Carlo Madness from the European Poker Tour Grand Final.
Please email any and all comments, questions, or views you have concerning this blog to ryan.lucchesi@cardplayer.com.
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