Poker News / Short-Stacked Shamus / 15 January 2010 / Leave a Comment

Poker players, listen up! If you're looking for a good read, poker pro and writer Victoria Coren has a terrific new book, For Richer, For Poorer: A Love Affair with Poker. Coren's book covers the last two decades of her poker career -- from her first introduction to the game to her initial ventures into the "Vic" (the Grosvenor Victoria Casino) to "Late Night Poker," the WSOP, the EPT, and more. In addition to recounting her own travails and triumphs in poker, Coren's book provides an interesting perspective on poker's growth more generally speaking -- from its pre-"boom" days as a casino curiosity played by relatively few to its present day status as a truly global phenomenon.

As I noted in a review of the book last week, For Richer, For Poorer is great fun throughout -- at times laugh-out-loud funny, at times poignant and insightful, and always engaging.

I recently had the opportunity to interview the London-based poker pro and regular columnist for The Observer and The Guardian. Coren was nice enough to take time out of her busy schedule while down in Nassau, Bahamas for the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure -- the first stop of the new North American Poker Tour.

Short-Stacked Shamus: Congratulations on For Richer, For Poorer -- a wonderful chronicle of your poker-related adventures. When did you get the idea to write a "poker memoir"?

Victoria Coren: Oh, I always wanted to write a poker book. I was inspired by the great poker books of the 1980s -- Al Alvarez, Anthony Holden, Jesse May -- and it felt like, since the "poker explosion", nobody had written a book like that, full of stories, blood & guts, funny characters. It was all soulless strategy guides. So I knew I wanted to write a proper, juicy poker story, and I waited until the time felt right. This year, it did.

SSS: You begin For Richer, For Poorer relating a scene in which you are a teenager listening to your older brother playing poker in the neighboring room with some friends. You are interested in joining in the boys' game, and eventually do. The scene signals one of the book's themes, namely, your choice to play a game in which men traditionally predominate. How would you characterize the place of women in the professional poker world, circa early 2010?

VC: It's completely different now. Internet poker made it possible for women to bypass all the things that had kept them away before -- the intimidating nature of a male-dominated room, the social stigma, the problems of being out late at night playing cards (whether it's a security issue, or just a practical problem if you have children). The internet encouraged women into the game, and that fed into the live game. The big live tournaments are still male-dominated, but the stigma is completely gone and there are far more women involved.

SSS: Another theme I noticed in the book is suggested by the title -- a phrase from traditional marriage vows. There's discussion in the book about marriage and its significance, but I was intrigued also by the way you characterize your relationship with poker itself. In what ways has that relationship been a "love affair"?

VC: Well, poker is not a job for me (I enjoy it too much) and it's not a hobby (I devote too much time to it). It's a way of life; I have embraced a life. In that sense, it's like a marriage -- or like a marriage should be. For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, poker and I are together for the long haul. I might kick against it sometimes, it might annoy me, I might hate it, but deep down I will love it for ever and I never plan to say goodbye. If I ever get married, I hope I'll feel the same way about my unlucky groom.

SSS: I really enjoyed the various character sketches you draw of friends like Dave "Devilfish" Ulliott, Neil Channing, John Duthie, Roland de Wolfe, the Hendon Mob guys, among others. Have any of them read the book and if so what has been their response?

VC: So far, thank God, I have not had a negative response from anyone who's read the book -- nobody at all. I don't know if Devilfish has read it, but all the others you mention have, and they were all kind enough to say they loved it. Ram Vaswani read it overnight in one sitting. I think poker players recognize the honesty in the book. They recognize the world being described as a very true one -- no PR bullshit, all the dark and light mixed up together -- and they like that.

SSS: There are some moving moments along the way. One that stands out for me comes near the book's midpoint when a memory of an especially happy, winning Vegas trip with friends dissolves into a flashback in which you visit the Portobello Market with your dad as a 12-year-old. Really nicely done. Was there a scene or memory that you relate in the book that you particularly enjoyed reliving?

VC: Well, of course I loved reliving the moment of winning the EPT London in 2006. It was an amazing night for so many reasons -- not just the money, SO not just the money -- and if I had a time machine, that's the night I'd revisit. If writing a memoir is like building your own time machine, then that's the journey I most enjoyed taking in it.

SSS: A couple more, non-book questions... First, what can you tell me about Sir William Ormerod?

VC: Ah, poor Sir William, may he rest in peace. When my father died, we held a memorial service for him and I was tipped off that there is a gang of very grubby people who go round memorial services of people they didn't know, in the hope of getting free drinks. Disgusting. These people applied for tickets to my father's service, but I couldn't turn them away immediately because they all pretended to have met him and I couldn't prove they hadn't. So, I invented a character called Sir William Ormerod -- a rich industrialist. I put him all over the internet, then I announced his death in The Times. Then I announced his memorial service -- and all these fraudsters wrote in for tickets, explaining how they knew him and how sad they were that he died. Ha! Once they were in my trap, I wrote about them in the newspaper. Unfortunately, I hear they're still at it. The ringleader is called Terrence Jolley. I might have to write a follow-up piece at some point, warning more families about this bunch of parasites.

SSS: As we talk, you're in the Bahamas for the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, the first of many tournaments at which you'll be appearing as a Team PokerStars pro in 2010. How's it going, being part of Team PokerStars?

VC: I just got knocked out of the PCA [Main Event] in 174th place for $17,5000. Not as good as last year's PCA, where I finished 30th for $40,000, but I'm pleased with the result. $17,500 is a lot of money and the day any poker player forgets that, they are sunk.

I love being part of Team Pro. Obviously I love the opportunity to travel and play tournaments, but also I have some good friends on the team and I'm proud to stand alongside them. Here in the Bahamas, lots of PokerStars players come up and say hello because they know us from the team. We have some responsibility to help make it a great event for them, and I genuinely enjoy that part of the job. I am a writer first and foremost and integrity is very important to me; if I didn't truly believe everything I say about PokerStars, I wouldn't have signed up with them. It's a great poker site, it has worked miracles for the game, and I love working with them.

Much thanks to Victoria Coren for taking the time. Read more from Coren -- as well as more about For Richer, For Poorer -- at her website, VictoriaCoren.com.

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