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Kitty The Crusher: New Poker Mom Finds Balance On And Off The Table

Kuo Talks To Card Player About Poker Parenting With Frankie C

by Sean Chaffin  |  Published: Mar 29, 2025

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Kitty Kuo is a great follow on social media. Her humorous musings about everything from her love life to the everyday mundane, as well as big wins, have long been a favorite in the poker world.

But Kitty, whose given name is Hui Chen, says she doesn’t intentionally work to add comedy to her posts. She’s an open book, for sure, but simply uses social media as a way to have a historical record of the events in her life. No topic is off limits, even if it concerns her friends, family, and relationships, including the father of her child, YouTube poker star Frankie C.

“I wanted to record what happened to me every day,” she said. “So, if one day I lose my memory, I can read my tweets. I could see, ‘Oh, I was happy in 2018. I was doing this and that in 2020.’ I’m not trying to make people laugh. I don’t make up stories or lie. I just write everything. But my friends told me, ‘Kitty, we love your tweets, but we don’t want to be in the story.’ Sometimes I share too much.”

The new mother may be a Kitty, but she is also a real poker tiger and a serious person beyond life on social media.

“People always think I’m a funny person, but actually I’m pretty serious. I don’t like to go to clubs, I don’t drink, I don’t do one-night stands. I have a master’s degree in electrical engineering. My whole life was work, studying, and being a good daughter in my family.”

While her background might not have suggested a career in poker was in the cards for Kuo, her work ethic definitely helped at the tables. Kuo has accumulated $3.5 million in live tournament winnings over the years with multiple big finishes on major poker stages around the world.

The Taiwan native sits just outside the top 10 on the women’s all-time money list and has three World Poker Tour final-table appearances, a World Series of Poker Circuit championship ring, and several six-figure cashes in a career stretching back to 2007.

Kuo recently spoke with Card Player about becoming a mom, her poker routine, and more.

Adjusting To Life As A Poker Mom

Life as a new mother has been quite a change for the jet-setting poker pro, but Kuo and her partner Frank Cucchiara are proud to be parents who make their unique lifestyle work. Cucchiara is a popular poker vlogger that also recently became a Card Player ambassador.

The poker-playing couple live in Las Vegas, but also travel to Asia regularly to hit the tables and visit her family. Adding a baby has brought some changes to the routine however.

“Before the baby, poker was easier to fit into my life,” she admitted. “Because if I saw any poker (tournaments) in Paris or in Asia, I could just fly there instantly. I always try to go back to Asia each year. But I need to think about my baby. I can’t just go anywhere as I could before.”

Instead, Kuo picks tournaments that work better for her new family, with many of those in the U.S. She still cashed plenty of times over the last year playing a much more limited schedule. That included a nice start to 2025 with an eighth-place finish in the $3,500 Borgata Poker Open Championship in January for $51,919. In November, she also went deep in the PokerStars North American Poker Tour $5,300 main event in Las Vegas for $14,900.

More children are in her future, Kuo says, but she may opt for a surrogate the next time around.

“Everyone told me that after you have a baby, you have less focus,” she said. “It took me a while to recover, to stay focused and study with my coach and practice GTO. It was a big comeback. So, I would prefer to just get someone else to carry the baby.”

More Selective, And Hunting Big Scores

Kuo notched the biggest cash of her career in August 2023, finishing fourth in the $5,300 Hard Rock Poker Open Championship for $480,763. Other career highlights include finishing sixth in a WPT Venetian event in 2021 for $192,855. The same year she came out on top in an Asian Poker Tour event in Taiwan for $26,011.

In 2019, Kuo took runner-up in a $5,200 event at the WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic for $117,031 at Bellagio. That was preceded by another runner-up in the WPT Bobby Baldwin Classic in 2018 for $248,380. Also in 2018, Kuo scored a fourth-place finish in a $25,000 Aussie Millions high roller for $198,731.

No matter the stage, Kuo has stayed consistent and keeps racking up cash. Her fun personality has also made her a popular player in live-streamed cash games like Live at the Bike, Poker Night in America, WPT Cash Game, Poker At The Lodge, and others.

But life as a new mom has meant dialing some of her play back and focusing more on Las Vegas events.

“I play poker tournaments now that only have a very good guarantee,” she explained. “I’m not playing tournaments every day. Before I played 250 days a year. Now I only play if they have a $4 million or $5 million guarantee. PokerGO has a PGT tournament almost every day now right next to my building, but I can’t go play because I want to make sure I spend certain time with my kid. But I do play cash games every day for four hours at Wynn and also some live streams.”

Winning A Date At The Poker Table

Poker actually brought Cucchiara and Kuo together. In December 2022, Kuo played in the WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas. While she didn’t cash, she did find love. After just flying back from Asia, she was asked to play on a live stream that had one seat available. Still suffering from jet lag, she wasn’t too interested and considered declining the invite, Kuo eventually came around and showed up.

“I wasn’t even supposed to be there, but that’s how I met Frankie,” she said. “I lived in Asia at the time and flew in for the tournament and cash game and they didn’t invite me until the last minute.”

“Nice to meet you, you’re cute,” Kuo said in the same breath, quickly breaking the ice.

A long-distance relationship began. Cucchiara, originally from Dallas, would take turns flying back and forth from Texas before eventually settling in Vegas. Cucchiara’s videos on their meeting, titled ‘If I Lose This Hand, I Owe My Opponent A Date’ have more than 5.5 million combined views. The follow up video, ‘If I Lose This Hand, I Owe My Opponent A Baby’ is his most popular longform video, with 3.5 million views.

Frankie C and Kitty Kuo

They plan to officially tie the knot at some point, with Kuo offering a blunt response for those nosey Twitter/X followers inquiring about her marital status.

“You look puffy after you have a baby, so I need to make sure I look sexy before we get married.”

Blackjack To Poker

Life at the poker table required an interesting route for Kuo. In the 2000s, she was working as an engineer at Samsung in South Korea. Back then, blackjack was her vice, and she would spend her weekends at the casino. Looking for a way to make her money last longer, she came across another game that combined her love of socializing at the table with her need to gamble.

“I saw a lot of people having a beer, having conversations, and everyone having fun,” she recalled. “I said, ‘What are you guys doing?’ They told me this is Texas hold’em. I asked how much the buy-in was and it was like $400. So, I used my ATM card and sat down to learn how to play. After that night, I never went back to the blackjack table.”

In 2009, she jumped headfirst into the tournament scene by flying to Macau for a PokerStars live tournament series. There she grabbed her first career win for $71,899 along with two runner-up finishes to earn the Player of the Series title.

She’s most proud of her fourth-place finish at the Hard Rock two years ago which was worth nearly half a million. The event featured 1,070 entries with Farid Jattin, Shannon Shorr, and Omer Rotman among the final four players.

“We did a four-way chop,” she said. “It was great to go so deep in such a big tournament, even if we didn’t end up playing it out for the win.”

As a teenager, she enjoyed playing mahjong with friends for money. The tile-based game was developed in the 19th century in China and has some of the same aspects of poker – skill, strategy, and luck.

She also enjoyed other card games, working out, and stood out in school academically, finishing second in her class. But there was always a draw towards gambling.

Kuo’s mother occasionally sent her jewelry as a gift. After some downswings, that bling would be sold to fund more time at the tables. When making the trip back home, her mother might ask why she wasn’t wearing one of the pieces she sent.

Not wanting to disappoint her, Kuo would simply respond, “Oh, I left it in Vegas,” which was technically true.

“When I was young, I did whatever my parents wanted,” said Kuo. “But I finally went to the casino and learned how to play poker, and it’s the first time I realized that this was the thing I really wanted to do with my life. I know this is the only thing I really like. I wanted to see if I could survive as a poker player. And if not, I could always go back to an engineering job. I’m smart. I always knew I could go back to a normal life. But I needed to take that shot.”

Coaching Kitty

Training is a big part of Kuo’s routine when she is in poker mode, and she’s never been afraid to ask for help. Along with using solvers to study game theory optimal strategy, she also employs a few coaches to improve her game. High-stakes crusher Steffen Sontheimer serves as her cash game coach, while two-time WSOP bracelet winner and WPT champion Nick Petrangelo helps with tournaments.

Other friends in the game will offer advice, including WSOP bracelet winners Toby Lewis and Ankush Mandavia. Kuo even sought out some coaching from four-time WPT champion Darren Elias after finishing runner-up to him in the WPT Bobby Baldwin Classic.

“I liked his style,” she said. “I thought, if this guy can win four WPTs, then he must be good against decent (sized) fields, because the WPT is not a GTO (tournament). It’s a lot of beginning players and players out for fun. All my coaches are really good at GTO, but I also really wanted to learn how to play against the fish. I worked with Darren for two years.”

Now that her baby is mobile, Kuo is determined to play more in 2025 and plans to up her tournament schedule with a few goals in mind. She wants to travel to play in a location she’s never been before. Additionally, she wants to head back to Asia more often to play events while seeing family.

While she brings plenty of skill to the table, Kuo also has a little bit of superstition in her game. She has a fossil as a card protector and wears a cat ring at the table, both of which she considers to be good luck charms. (Ironically, Kitty doesn’t own a cat. Frankie is allergic.)

Find Kuo on Twitter/X @kittykuopoker.

*Photos by Card Player, World Poker Tour, and Kitty Kuo

 
 
Tags: Kitty Kuo,   Hui Chen Kuo,   Player Profile,   Player Feature,   Player Interview,   Poker Mom,   Women In Poker,   Ladies Poker,   Taiwan,   Frankie C,   Frank Cucchiara,   Poker Parents,   Poker Parenting
 
 
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