Level 9 (1,200/600/1,200)
Total Entrants: 118
Brad Hatcher (Brad Hatcher) spent 19 years as a high school teacher. The 46-year-old from Omaha taught history and government, and also coached track. But this year after being a bit burned out, Hatcher decided to give his love of poker a shot. A regular cash game player here at the Horseshoe, he's hoping to move on to Day 2 tomorrow.
"Right now I'm just doing this as long as it keeps going well," he says. "Things are going well so far. I may eventually go back to education. I didn't retire, I'm just on sabbatical."
While Hatcher mostly plays here in Council Bluffs, he has his eye on a few events in Vegas including the upcoming DeepStacks Extraveganza at the Venetian.
When he decided to leave teaching, some of his students were a bit upset with the news and it was a difficult decision to make.
"My students were a little more surprised that I was leaving than that I was going to play poker," he says. "A lot of them knew that I liked to play."
Colleagues, however, were a different story.
"They knew because I've been playing recreationally for 15 years," he says. "It wasn't a surprise."
No doubt he'll be hearing from many former students and colleagues if he can notch a nice win here this weekend