If it wasn’t for live tournament reporting then I’m not sure how I would have managed my foray into the world of poker. I left the Rail Industry with a severance package that I believed would give me one year to carve my own niche in this brave new world, and had I not found this type of work, I think I would have ended up back on the iron road.
When I started, it was incredibly important for me to work at least one poker tournament per month. This gave me the money to at least cover my expenses. Two tournaments was pure gravy. Now I had some money to play with. Zero tournaments, and it was panic stations.
When I worked on the Railway I was responsible for the freight that came out of West Wales and our biggest customer was the steel manufacturer Corus. They were so big that when the financial crisis hit in 2007, we were on the verge of falling apart as Corus simply stopped making steel.
We learned a very important lesson during that timeframe. Soon afterwards we developed a plan to become less reliant on Corus and to create more streams of income to keep us a float should ever a thing happen again.
This was on my mind when I started live reporting. It was a classic Catch-22 situation. I needed the work, and so I never turned down a trip, but I knew I was becoming heavily dependent on the trips in order to pay my bills. Back then a single trip constituted 3/4 of my entire monthly income.
Live reporting created another problem in my life; one that I touched on last week when I wrote about how families are affected by poker. I was going through a divorce and was struggling to come to terms with the fact that I could no longer kiss my son on the forehead before he went to sleep at night.
It was an horrific time for me, not just because I couldn’t see my own son anymore, but because I had this terrible inner conflict raging about my decision to work abroad instead of being home to see my son, if and when I could. I would turn jobs down so I could see him and then it wouldn’t materialize, or I would take jobs on and then be asked to see him at the last minute and have to turn him down.
There was a point in my life when I was head butting the wall in my mother’s home in pure frustration. I was trying to do the right thing, and yet everything I did hurt someone. Now I can look back and see that I did the very best that I could. But back then I couldn’t see anything. Life had ripped my eyeballs out of their sockets and they were being used as Ping-Pong balls.
Life wasn’t working. People were getting hurt. I needed a plan.
I approached the problem in a number of different ways. The first was to work harder than anybody in the industry. I got my head down and just typed, and typed and typed. I knew if I could keep my levels of quality up, and was seen to go beyond and above the call of duty then success would follow.
I also asked the universe to help me out. I meditated, tapped and affirmed on a daily basis. Each time I asked for something I got what I wanted. I never believed in any of that old crap until it started working for me. Today I am a die-hard believer in the Law of Attraction.
Then there was innovation.
There are plenty of poker writers and a lot of them more talented than me. Christ, I don’t even know what an adverb is for peats sake. I knew I had to think of ways to write differently and to take poker to the poker people in a different way. I decided I would take the route through the town of emotion and so far it seems to be working for me.
I also started to scrimp on my spending at live tournaments.
I was trying to be a Billy Big Potato but was nothing more than Spud. I have always had a problem with my ego and I hate being classed lower than anyone else. I would eat with the poker players and play credit card roulette to see who would pay the bill. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that some of the bills would have cost me a month’s wages.
I guess the universe was keeping an eye on me because I never lost one.
I always had to keep an eye on my food and drink expenditure. I don’t drink alcohol, don’t smoke, don’t gamble (that much) and don’t take drugs, so most of my money is spent on food.
For a Live Tournament reporter, it is absolute heaven when you arrive at an event to be told that all the food and drinks are free. The greatest location I have ever worked at was the Mazagan Beach Resort in Casablanca, Morocco.
They had this eat as much as you like buffet that was absolutely golden. It was like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory for adults, and people used to have to roll me out of there. It’s just such a shame I never got to go back.
The worst places are the ones with no free food, very little outside at a decent rate and next to nothing in the casino. The very worst has to be Monte Carlo. When you are paying €10 for a sandwich and €8 for a mall bottle of water, you aren’t taking much money home after you have cleared your expenses.
But I was prepared…
I always carry Tupperware with me when I go to live tournament events. In Monte Carlo I would take my bag to breakfast and fill my Tupperware dish with bread, boiled eggs and as much fruit as I could muster. That would be my dinner and my tea.
Stealing food from the breakfast bar is rife. It’s hilarious at breakfast times as people all sit in the darkest recesses of the dining halls so they won’t be seen pushing their 5 apples, 3 kiwi fruits, 4 slices of bread, 2 bananas and 6 boiled eggs into their handbags and ruck sacks.
Just don’t tell the universe that I steal food…because if you do I am seriously f**ked!