Novelist Jane Hitchcock Searches for Her First WPT Cash on Verge of New Book Release

It’s a common trend for poker players, especially new ones, to lose track of time at the table. With all their focus on the cards and chips in front of them, it’s easy for several hours to feel like just a couple of minutes.

Jane Hitchcock isn’t new to this sensation, however. As a former playwright and current murder mystery novelist, she also loses track of time when she’s putting words to paper. After her latest release, Mortal Friends, in 2009, she took an interest in poker.

She jumped online and quickly began amassing a ton of play chips. Over the course of the next eight years, she progressed from play money tournaments on the computer to playing against some of the best players in the game at the Borgata Winter Poker Open on the World Poker Tour.

The 71-year-old from Washington, D.C., didn’t get off to the best start on Day 1A. Thanks to a cooler where she made a flush against the nut flush, she already re-entered once before the first break. Regardless, she’s still enjoying battling wits with the other players at her table.

“It’s all great fun and people are so nice to me here,” said Hitchcock. “It’s just a new life for me. It’s so great.”

Her early success online gave her confidence and a nudge from her close friend was all it took for her to start playing live poker for real money. Her beginner’s luck continued even after her first trip to Las Vegas. After that, she learned about variance the hard way.

“At one point online, I think I had 16 million in play chips and I thought, ‘Why does anyone have a problem with this game? It’s so easy,’” said Hitchcock. “My first trip to the World Series of Poker, I made a straight flush against aces full. I cashed and thought, ‘People are so uptight about this game. It’s so easy. Clearly, I am very talented.’ And for the next four years, I couldn’t win a hand.”

It’s been nearly a decade since her last book came out, but her next one, Bluff, is scheduled for release next month and uses poker as a backdrop for her next murder mystery novel.

“Poker is like mental war,” said Hitchcock. “And women aren’t supposed to go to war, particularly not old bats like me. But I’m warlike. I write about murder.”

Hitchcock’s recent fame came from her novels, but it was her early experience as a playwright that prepared her for her time spent on the felt.

“At a poker table, you’re in a play,” said Hitchcock. “Every hand is a scene and every player is an actor. It’s trying to figure out who the hams are, who the bad actors are, who the really good actors are, and who the director is, which is usually someone like a Jonathan Little or a Phil Ivey or someone like that. There are a lot of directors in this tournament.”

Eventually, Hitchcock left the acting world to focus on her novels. She didn’t want to rely on actors and directors to convey the message of her words. In a game like poker, where there are so many contributing factors to a hand that are out of your control, it would seem contradictory for her to be drawn to the game.

She quickly realized that at the highest levels of poker, most things are in your control. To the best players on the planet, cards are secondary.

“What I really learned from being a playwright is to watch people,” she said. “Because I sometimes had to cast a play. Poker, at this level, is not about the cards. Cards are irrelevant. I’ve seen that over and over again. A great player can take chips from me like candy from a baby. It’s not about the cards.”

Despite playing hands against someone, Hitchcock looks at everything as a battle against herself. It’s a battle to stay in the moment and play the hand to the best of your ability.

“You’re not playing against anybody else,” said Hitchcock. “You’re playing against all of your neurosis, all of your highs and lows of what you did that morning. That’s why I think Fedor Holz just goes into a trance before he goes in and he just forgets that he is the best player in the world and knows that this is about conquering your demons.”

She is the definition of success by any metric you want to use. That doesn’t mean she isn’t tough. The demons she conquers in poker pales in comparison to what she went through before getting into poker.

“And I’ve had to conquer a lot of demons,” she said. “I have two brothers who died of drug addiction and a very difficult family life. Yet, I’ve felt really, really blessed. You conquer demons and you play this game and it’s just wonderful.”

She comes into the $3,500 WPT main event on the heels of her second career victory. Last month, she won a $1,080 no-limit hold’em turbo event at MGM National Harbor. She’s already secured a cash in a WPTDeepStacks event at Maryland Live!, but finishing in the money at Borgata would secure her first WPT Main Tour cash of her career.

If her first WPT Main Tour cash must wait one more stop, it won’t hinder her experience in the slightest.

“At my age, and in my world, people are usually in suits looking for a lunch date,” she said. “I love being with young people and since everybody here is younger than I am, I don’t feel as old as I really am. My husband, my brilliant journalist husband [Jim Hoagland], two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, is extremely proud of me even though he hates me being away from him and the doggie.”

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