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 Victoria Coren – in the Texan school of players |
Champ banks on another winning hand
Journalist Victoria Coren is attempting a historic double victory in a $1m poker game next week, writes Dan Carrier
For Richer, For Poorer: A Love Affair With Poker. By Victoria Coren. Canongate
Books £16.99.
I’M not superstitious,” Victoria Coren, journalist and poker star says. “But I won’t wear green. It is unlucky.”
This admission comes as she is preparing for one of the biggest games of her life, a game that, if she wins, means in six days’ time Belsize Park will be home to a European champion.
Coren takes her seat tomorrow night (Friday) at the London leg of the European Poker Tournament and hopes to battle her way through hundreds of other players and walk off with a $1million pot.
The tournament is at the Hilton Metropole Hotel in Edgware Road – just a few hundred yards from the scene of her triumph when she won the same tournament in 2006.
She won’t advise me to risk any money on her repeating the feat.
“Of course, I’ll be playing my best game and hope to win for a historic second time,” she says. “You go into any tournament hoping to win, but it would be greedy of me to expect to win it twice.”
For those up against her, they could get a few tips on how to read her game. Her previous triumph is outlined in her new poker memoir that intertwines autobiography with both her take on why poker has come to matter so much in her life and taking us hand by hand through the last table of nine when she won the tournament.
The winner next week will have certain attributes that make a good poker player, says Vicky.
“Some of the greatest players in the world are spotty, glasses-wearing maths geeks who look they haven’t seen any fresh air for some time,” she says. “They have a mathematical understanding of the game. Then there are great fat Texans who never finished school and can’t do their eight times table. But they combine aggression and a fearlessness and can read other people. If you can combine the two, you just can’t be beaten.”
Victoria puts herself in the second bracket, citing her success in live games compared to her not-so-great record on internet poker.
Her book has plenty of nail-biting moments. She explains how she was introduced to the game as a teenager through her brother and his friends; and she eloquently, soberly, speaks of the loss of her father, Alan.
The $1m game stands out – she takes us with her to the final hand, where she waits to see if a seven turns up. If the card shows, she has lost. If the next card the dealer turns over is anything else, she’s the winner.
We know she is holding the six of clubs and the seven of diamonds in her “hole” cards. It has the makings of a great poker hand – it is the start of a “straight” if the communal cards fall the right way – but for Victoria, it is a risky play: the chances of this happening are not great.
But this is a unique situation. She is down to a “heads-up” (that’s one against one) competition against respected card player Emad Tatouh.
The “flop” comes down (the three cards that are first to be laid down are called the flop) and the three cards are the ones she is looking for: the five of clubs, the eight of clubs and the four of diamonds.
Now all she needs to do is persuade her opponent that her hand is not all that great, and hope he comes in with something playable: that would mean he believes he can win it.
The chances of the next card being a seven are so slim, Victoria breaks one of a million unsaid pieces of etiquette that seem to govern poker players. She leaps up from her chair as her opponent says “all in” and shoves his chips in to the middle.
“I turn my cards over and stand up so fast I almost knock my chair over and Emad puts his head in his hands and he rolls over a six hearts and an eight clubs...
“The crowd on the rail are already cheering, making so much noise. Normally I would hate the early cheer but I know the number seven is not coming...”
The river – poker parlance for the final card – is a Jack. The seven doesn’t come. She’s the champ.
This giant win did not only make her rather rich overnight, it also made headlines: a female journalist taking on professional poker players, and being crowned European champion? It’s a wonder it took so long – this happened in 2006 – for the book to come out.
Victoria’s star has risen not just because of this victory, and her column in the Observer, but because of the burgeoning popularity of poker. With the rise of internet games, and TV companies working out how to televise the games without them being deadly dull, she presents an intelligent face of poker playing.
But Vicky says the bottom line is poker is simply a very good game to play, with the added bonus that you can walk off with a handsome cash reward for your talent at the table.
“The money is of course a factor,” she admits.
“It sets it apart from other card games: as brilliant as a game like bridge or rummy is, when you see someone spend $40 to get into a world series and walk away with $2.5million, then that is a certain attraction.”
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