2012 WSOP Big One For One Drop runner-up Sam Trickett recently announced on his blog on Everest that he and Natasha Sandhu have parted ways after 10 years together. The decision seems to have been mutual and he wrote that he and Natasha "have grown apart over the time it has taken us to mature into adults. "It seems like all the travelling to play poker over the past years was one of the main reasons the relationship didn't last...
"Every job can create a problem for your relationship, and the ones that poker provides can be tough. One of the most difficult parts of the job was being away from each other for long periods of time. The more successful you are, the more you seem to travel and want to play," Sam explained. "We tried to cure this problem by Tash traveling with me, but it compounded the issue. I would worry that she was in her hotel room, all alone, with nothing but an absurd foreign TV show for company."
"It would put me off my game, or I would leave early to go back to meet her. So, over time, Tash came away with me less and less. As I departed for each trip I think we drifted further and further apart. We also got a couple of puppies so that lead to her now staying at home more and more. I think connection is extremely important in a relationship. It needs to be kept on the burner, so it's hot. We lost that. Our love evolved differently. We cared for each other more than ever, but the spark was gone."
Sam Trickett first met ‘Tash' at the age of 16...
"I first met Tash when I was 16 years old. It was at a school disco and I remember kissing her for the first time and something felt different. I felt extremely attracted to her and it was exciting. I'm not too sure about that ‘love at first sight' thing, but I knew straight away that she was special. A few years later I would bump into her again, in Retford, and our relationship began."
"There was no Facebook or Twitter, back then - just a lot of texting. She would always do really thoughtful things for me. She was going out of her way to make me happy and she always put me first. Our relationship moved forward very quickly and before you know it we had been together 10 years. I was 18 back then; today I am 28."
Not first first time they have called it quits...
"This is the second time we have broken up. The first time was when I went to Cape Town to teach poker. I was broke, suffering a lot of stress, and didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I never opened my heart to her; allowed her to experience my pain, and that caused a divide between us. When we got back together, I let her in. Things were different. And then I went on that amazing run. I won millions of dollars in a really short amount of time. Lucky streak is not the word for it. Suddenly, it felt like a new start; one that I wasn't going to screw up."
