News: "Comedy Panel Shows Are Much Scarier Than Poker"

We learn more about the other side of PokerStars Pro and EPT Champion Vicky Coren, who (when she is not playing poker), is a successful journalist and broadcaster.

PokerStars Pro Vicky Coren is perhaps best known to poker players for winning EPT London in 2006. But in the UK she has always been an accomplished journalist and broadcaster, and is a regular on topical news and comedy panel shows such as Have I Got News For You. We caught up with her at UKIPT Nottingham to learn more about the other side of Victoria Coren.

"Panel shows are much scarier than worrying when you get dealt a pair of eights and slightly overplay them"

Vicky on Have I Got News For You

PokerStrategy.com: What is more intimidating, sharing a table with the best poker players in the world, or being on a panel show with the funniest comedians in the world?

Vicky Coren: Panel show by about a million times, I never found poker intimidating. One of the things I found fun when I started was that everyone thought it should be intimidating, especially for women, and it really wasn't.

Because poker is a game, its fun, and if you screw up a hand, a bunch of people on the internet will take the mickey, but it is not broadcast to a million people, then over and over again on Dave (a UK comedy channel) forever for people to say "she's not funny".

Panel shows I find terrifying, the idea that people are supposed to be opinionated and funny, and you might not be, and they are filming it, is much scarier than worrying you might get dealt a pair of eights and slightly overplay them.

PokerStrategy.com: Would the ultimate challenge be appearing on QI (a British comedy panel show which is also educational)?

Vicky Coren: Funnily enough, I have said I will do the next series of QI, because like I said, QI terrifies me, because it is a showcase of people's knowledge. You see these panelists and they are just brilliant, and they'll say "here is an interesting little-known fact about the rhinoceros" and you worry you will sit there and your mind will go blank and they think you are clever and you are obviously not, but this time I have decided to be brave and do the next series.

PokerStrategy.com: Who do you think are more talented, poker players or comedians?

Vicky Coren: There is different sorts of clever, you can play poker with somebody and think that's a brilliant mind at work, when you see somebody who is absolutely on their game, and they just know where they are at the time - that's super impressive. People on panel shows, it's similar in a way, when they're in the zone and their mind is working. They have something in common, like when you see anyone doing anything well, it's very impressive.

PokerStrategy.com: What do your peers in entertainment and journalism think of you playing poker?

Vicky Coren: The brilliant thing is that they just think I'm great at poker and know everything about it, in the way you only can when you are on the outside. People I work with in journalism and broadcasting, they understand I have won a lot of money at this game, and that's cool. It's not diluted by them also thinking "she probably plays too many hands out of position", "she gets a bit overexcited by a pair of sevens". They don't have those insights to the leaks in my game; they just think "wow, that's amazing, it's a top level sport and she seems to be doing well at it", and they think its cool.

"If I go to Vegas for a month, I can emerge at the other end with no idea what happened in the world"

EPT champion & Team PokerStars Pro

PokerStrategy.com: Because you have a mainstream reach, do you find yourself defending poker more than the average sponsored playe?

Vicky Coren: I'm often talking to a different audience. Sponsored pros, a lot of the time, have the job of talking to the poker community. It's either giving tips on how to play, recommending particular tournaments, explaining why PokerStars is better than other sites. That's a very important job to do; there are millions of poker players all over the world and a great number of things being offered.

I spend more time speaking to people who want to play poker and literally don't know where to start. I guess the mainstream don't all yet know exactly what it is, I quite like that though, being a translator, being on news programmes where they still ask the basic questions like 'is gambling dangerous?' and 'are you a mind reader?' and 'do you feel guilty when people lose their money?'

Sometimes you feel like a visitor from another planet your job is to explain the curious world we live in. I quite like that, I would love to play poker all the time, I feel jealous of all my friends who wake up, spend all day playing in the Vic, go home and then do that again. But at the same time, you don't want to disappear completely from the real world, so I think it's quite healthy for me.

PokerStrategy.com: You have to stay informed to appear on these shows, and for your journalism, do you think most of the poker world is a bubble?

Vicky Coren: It can be, I know how that works. If I go to Vegas for a month, I can emerge at the other end with no idea what happened in the world. I'm not sure it matters enormously, I think you can have quite a nice life pottering about and playing cards without worrying what's going on in Syria. I write a weekly newspaper column, so I read the papers every day anyway looking for stuff to write about, I quite like being informed, but also I quite like being surprising.

I have a rebellious little heart, that's the reason I do half the things I do. That's why I started poker in the first place, I did stand up comedy before that for the same reason - people said women were not funny and shouldn't do stand-up comedy. When comedy was a cool thing in the mid-90s, I never saw any women and people said it was because they cant tell jokes and are not funny, so I thought "we'll see about that". Poker was almost the next thing; the idea you can't do something and the opportunity to surprise people, I find massively appealing. With poker you can do that with every hand, every hand you can have the fun of completely tricking someone and surprising them with the result.

"I liked the fact that stand-up was meant to be scary"

Presenting her game show "Only Connect"

PokerStrategy.com: How did the stand up go?

Vicky Coren: I did a couple of shows in Edinburgh and there was a real network of small clubs around London, there still is. There was a trajectory - there was a club that had open spots where anyone could show up and do 5 minutes for no fee. If you made people laugh they would invite you back the next week for a 10 minute session and pay you £30, if that went well you got 20 minutes. Its a bit of a ladder, like poker in a way; these open spots are the equivalent of freerolls, building your way up to real money.

PokerStrategy.com: Edinburgh is like the WSOP of comedy, what was that like?

Vicky Coren: I loved it. I wouldn't have the nerve to do it now, which is a real shame. You go away for a month and rent a flat with a bunch of other people trying to do comedy. The appeal is very similar to poker; the constant challenge, it's never easy, every time you have to adjust for the people in the room, the mood of the day, and I love that. Those disciplines keep you alert, keep you fresh.

It's too scary, it's the scariest thing, standing up in front of a hundred, or two hundred, or even twenty strangers, and you have to make them laugh. It's terrifying.

PokerStrategy.com: I guess you didn't do Late & Live (a notorious Edinburgh show where the audience is encouraged to get drunk and heckle)?

Vicky Coren: I did do Late & Live, it went very well. I liked the fact it was meant to be scary. I would sooner do that then a polite hour where everyone is nice, it's the challenge. It was a packed theatre full of roaring drunk people, and I loved that kind of challenge.

Also I was a 19-year-old girl and almost everyone on the bill was a 35 year old man, so if you turned up in a pretty dress they would think you were very sweet and not be funny at all, and feel sorry for you. If from that position, you say really opinionated things and swear a bit, they will be so amazed you can be off the stage before they've even thought about [heckling].

PokerStrategy.com: How do you plan your poker calendar with all the other work you do?

Vicky Coren: The poker calendar is fairly set now anyway. I'm very grateful to PokerStars when they come up with a tournament schedule a bit in advance. Sometimes they say there is a brand-new EPT in a rural part of Italy, which I can never make. I always play the EPT Grand Final, EPT London and two others in the year. UKIPT, I always try to make all the English events, but I don't get to all the Irish ones. I'll be honest, that's for the very simple reason that I'm frightened of flying so I have to ration the number of plane journeys I make in the year! But I hear the Irish ones are even more fun, with a really good spirit. I definitely want to get there - next year if not this year.

I'll always play online on Sundays if I'm at home, and always play live at the Vic if I have a spare night in the week. I book around it, I enjoy baffling TV people when they ask me to do a programme and I say I can't because I am going to be in Nottingham and Monte Carlo. If you don't play poker the idea of travelling to Nottingham then Monte Carlo is so weird.

by Barry Carter