Two-time EPT Main Event winner Victoria Coren Mitchell talks to iNTERGAMINGi about being an ambassador for poker and how the internet has changed the game for the better.
VICTORIA Coren Mitchell’s CV must make for interesting reading. She was born into a nascent journalistic dynasty as daughter of the late writer and satirist Alan Coren and younger sister to future columnist and restaurant critic Giles Coren.
Coren Mitchell broke into the world of professional journalism when she was just 14. Since then, she has written extensively on a broad range of topics, directed a pornographic film (really, she has), appeared frequently on primetime television and presented more than 100 editions of the BBC Four quiz show Only Connect. So far, so This Is Your Life.
An obvious appetite for life and for intellectual stimulation has lead Coren Mitchell down a number of different career paths and even the occasional cul-de-sac. Her job co-directing hardcore pornography was over before it even got started (although it did spawn a successful book, cheekily titled Once More, With Feeling) while the presenter’s stand-up comedy career was of the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it variety. But genuine talent usually prevails. Smart, likeable and devastatingly quick-witted, Coren Mitchell seems to have a mind capable of setting itself to almost any challenge.
Fast-forward to 2014, and for all her achievements in other fields, Coren Mitchell enjoys a rare and vaulted accolade: she is the first player ever to win two European Poker Tour Main Events, adding this year’s Sanremo title to a win picked up in London in 2006.
The broadsheets have hailed her “Queen Victoria” and the poker press credits “Vicky” with spearheading a renaissance that is seeing the game attract a whole new audience. Coren Mitchell’s November 2012 marriage to comedian and actor David Mitchell gave her career trajectory an interesting personal footnote; the coupling coming as it did seemingly from nowhere. Who knew the famous were entitled to private lives?
From teenage card games in the kitchen with brother Giles and his friends to conquering the poker tables of Europe, it is an unlikely if enormously appealing story. According to pokerpages.com, Coren Mitchell’s career poker earnings of $2,146,562 (and counting) have made her the ninth highest earning female player of all time, hot on the heels of fellow Brit Liv Boeree. So how did all this happen? Still basking in the glory of that Sanremo win, Coren Mitchell spoke to iNTERGAMINGi about her poker career and the impact that online gaming is having on her game and the poker industry in general.
Read the full article in the issue 4 of iNTERGAMINGi
