"There's been an absurd amount of interest since the double-EPT win" Vicky Coren
We chat exclusively to the first ever double-EPT champion Vicky Coren about what she thinks her victory will do for the poker industry.
"There has been an absurd amount of interest"
PokerStrategy.com: What has the last week been like? Has it been non-stop interviews?
Vicky Coren: It’s been non-stop although not all with interviews because you don’t want to do too many.
I’ve done a few interviews, but mostly it’s been replying to people on Twitter and trying to get some work done because I was in the tournament three days longer than I thought I was going to be, so I’m behind with my other work.
PokerStrategy.com: Were you surprised at the level of interest the win has attracted?
Vicky Coren: I’m sort of juggling the various press requests because it’s true, there has been an absurd amount of interest.
I had a text from a friend of mine who’s on holiday in the Maldives with a photograph of the Maldives local paper with the story about the Sanremo win in it. I think at that point it really hit home. Gosh, this is quite a big thing.
PokerStrategy.com: Prior to the final table, did you have serious aspirations to be the first double-EPT champion?
Vicky Coren: Obviously, I thought it was a possibility. My God, you can’t play poker if you don’t think that yourself winning it is a possibility, but I just don’t really think like that. I don’t tend to think in that very macho - I’m a winner, I’m going to do it, the others don’t have a chance - sort of way. I find it more comforting to be pessimistic because that way I won’t be disappointed.
I tend to go into events thinking I hope I have a nice time. It’ll be good to make some money. Anything better will be a bonus.
"The EPTs are very intense fields of highly skilled players"
PokerStrategy.com: Prior to the tournament, how tough an accolade did you think double-EPT was? Compared to similar ones, like the Triple Crown?
Vicky Coren: It certainly would be the accolade that would mean the most to me because I’ve never played a WPT event and I didn’t play many World Series events. The EPTs are really what I play so that was the only record I had a chance of breaking.
Of course, I thought it meant a lot because they are very intense fields of very highly skilled players, so I would have been very impressed if somebody else had won too.
PokerStrategy.com: Obviously EPT London was special because it was home turf, was this victory special in a similar way because it was the first one representing Team PokerStars?
Vicky Coren: Actually, I had started my PokerStars deal at EPT London. I wasn’t sure about the scale of the commitment. I wasn’t sure if I was good enough and frankly neither were they. We were at the point where I said to them, “You know what? Why don’t you put me in the EPT in London? It’s my hometown; it’s where I’m most comfortable. Why don’t you put me in that event? We’ll see how it goes.”
The first tournament I played in the PokerStars logo, I won. I think ever since then I thought PokerStars are lucky for me and maybe they think I’m lucky for them.
We’ve been a very happy team. Obviously from that point of view, it’s nice to win another one and reassure them they might be right.
PokerStrategy.com: Did that previous EPT win help near the end of Sanremo, or did it add extra pressure because of the enormity of the double-EPT win?
Vicky Coren: I always feel comfortable at the poker table and if I didn’t, I wouldn’t play.
I think what was certainly an advantage was having played on a lot of TV tables. I wasn’t nervous about the cameras. Some people start playing a really funny game because they’re thinking about what the commentators are going to say and what their friends will say when they see their hands. I don’t worry about any of that nonsense, so that was an advantage.
Before the final table started when there were eight of us, the interviewer asked me what it would mean to win another title and I said, “I don’t want to answer that question. I just feel silly. I’m the short stack of eight. I tend to think like a pessimist. If I win it, you can ask me afterwards.”
He did ask me afterwards, but by that time I’d had four glasses of wine and wasn’t going to be able to answer.
"A lot of people who had never seen poker before tuned in"
PokerStrategy.com: Were you surprised at how much mainstream media attention this victory has received?
Vicky Coren: There was quite a lot of press for the London win. I think this time round it was a bit of a perfect storm. I started tweeting the tournament on day one and I don’t tweet every tournament I play. On that occasion, for whatever reason, I was tweeting updates from the beginning of day one and quite regularly.
By the time I got as far as day three and in the money it had become, I think, quite interesting for people following it even if they didn’t play poker. They understood the development, they understood about your being knocked out and the money starting to come in.
Going into the final table, there were people that wanted to tune in and watch because it felt like kind of a great story and they’ve been there since the beginning.
It became a bit of a novelty activity for people to watch. Then when I won, I hope people were rewarded for watching. I was very aware that a lot of people that hadn’t ever seen poker before had tuned in because they’d been following these tweets probably expecting ninety minutes like a football match. Eight hours in, it was still going on.
I started to feel I really have to win it now because otherwise it’s like a sort of terrible movie that the director’s got me watch three hours of and the ending’s bad. I think it turned out to be a great ending.
PokerStrategy.com: Everyone in poker knows how significant the double-EPT accolade was, do you think it was as clear for the non-poker audience, or does it need some explaining?
Vicky Coren: Well, yes and no. I think it was something that the press did quite a good job of explaining. I think people probably remember the London win because that got a lot of press attention. I still have framed on my wall a poster that’s an advert from the Evening Standard that says, “Woman Wins Fortune at Poker”. It might as well have said they found a talking dog, there was such incredulity in the headline.
For the ones that didn’t realise the significance of a double-EPT winner, €476,000 is a lot of money. I think people certainly understand the significance of that.
"Lots of people told me they're going to play poker after I won"
PokerStrategy.com: Everyone, myself included, has said your win will be good for the promotion of poker. From your own experience, are you seeing evidence of this happening?
Vicky Coren: Oh, yes, of course. There are literally hundreds of people on Twitter saying to me either "I’m going to start playing poker" or "I had stopped playing poker but I’m going to start again" or "I’ve always wanted to play poker and now I’m going to try." It absolutely translates.
It’s very specific what I hope it will translate to, which is the people that want to play poker but for some reason have been too scared to try and think it might be fun. That’s who I’m talking to.
Obviously, it comes with a sense of responsibility. You don’t want people who are maybe in dire financial straits that find the idea of poker terrifying, see that I’ve won a lot of money and think they’ll go into it for that reason.
I am not interested in luring a lot of desperate, hopeful people in. I’m interested in the reasons I went into playing poker. I didn’t go into it to make a living or to make my fortune. I went into it for the challenge and the adventure and the fun. As it happened, I fell so in love with the game that I gave most of my life to it and ended up buying my flat with the proceeds.
If it makes sense, I’m the person I’m speaking to; people like me that want to play for the right reasons and just need a bit of reassurance that it isn’t weird.
PokerStrategy.com: Do you feel any added pressure, now that we seem to be making you the torch bearer for the game?
Vicky Coren: No, not really because I think poker’s huge already. When people start saying things like, "oh, it’s plateaued a bit and only four hundred people turned up to play this or that €5,000 euro tournament", I just want to say, “You should have seen what it was like when I started.” You went to play and it was the same twenty people every time.
What I hope this is useful in doing is very clearly marking poker as a different thing to other gambling. It’s not like standing in your local bookies mind numbingly thumbing coins into a machine you can never beat. Of course there’s luck, but there’s skill and there’s fun. I certainly hope it will translate into a feeling in the world of what poker is.
"Shyness is a big barrier for potential new poker players"
PokerStrategy.com: The expectation is this will have a positive impact on British poker and female poker, which market do you think stands to gain the most, in your experience?
Vicky Coren: I don’t really think in terms of markets. I think women are a subset of the group of people who have a sneaking suspicion they’d love poker and they might be quite good at it and they’re too shy to try.
PokerStrategy.com: Do you think shyness is perhaps the biggest barrier to entry for potential new poker players?
Vicky Coren: Of course. I remember when I wanted to start playing in casinos I was very shy. I used to go into the Vic and be too nervous to go into the card room. I’m very glad I got over that.
Also weirdly, I would say that a lot of the people who were brilliant at poker are also shy; a crossover. On my quiz show on Only Connect, we have incredibly clever people; they’re brilliant. A lot of the time they’re quite shy and they’re quite bookish. It’s a particular kind of mind that isn’t necessarily gung-ho about the social stuff, but is brilliant at quizzes and crosswords and poker.
I think it’s quite a lot of the people that sense they would be good at the game face the stumbling block of walking into a room full of strangers and sitting down and saying hello. I know that because I’ve been there myself. All I can say is one day I got over it and I went into the card room and I barely ever left.
PokerStrategy.com: Thanks Vicky - fingers crossed for the Triple-EPT.
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 Barry Carter is the editor of PokerStrategy.com and the co-author of The Mental Game of Poker 1 & 2. He has been working in the poker industry for nine years and in 2013 won the APAT Award for Best Poker Media Provider. You can learn more about his work here.
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