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Ms. Mitchell, a well known UK based journalist quiz show presenter, has just won a prize of around £400, 000 ($600, 000) making her one of the most successful female poker players in history.
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Victoria Coren Mitchell set a new record this weekend when she became the first-ever professional player to win the European Poker Tour trophy on two separate occasions.
Victoria, well-known in the United Kingdom as a newspaper columnist appearing regularly in The Guardian and The Observer , as well as for hosting Only Connect a quiz show presented on the BBC Four channel, as well as being a regular panelist on such other popular TV shows as Have I Got News For You and Question Time.
In this year’s tournament, Victoria Coren Mitchell beat off a field of more than 550 competitors in San Remo, Italy to win the first prize of £391, 932 as well as a watch worth more than £4, 000 in a hard-fought tournament which lasted more than a week. At one point Victoria was in eight place at the final table, but gradually whittled down our opponents to take the first place.
Victoria is now estimated to have won around £1.4 million ($2.1 million) in prize money from her undoubted poker skills, although lagging well behind Vanessa Selbst a Jewish-American professional poker player who is rated as being top-earning female tournament player of all time, having brought in excess of $9 million in prize money
Ms. Coren Mitchell, who is married to well-known UK comedian David Mitchell, not only became the first poker player to have won the European Poker Tour Tournament twice , but still hold the distinction of being its first and only female winner, a feat she achieved in 2006.
According to poker media, Victoria’s victory places her high up on the current list of the world’s leading female players, as well as being one of the all-time top 10 female poker players in history
Launched by PokerStars 10 years ago, the European Poker Tour is now a major event in the international poker calendar alongside the World Series of Poker and the World Poker Tour.
In a short statement which appeared on the Poker Stars website Ms. Coren Mitchell was quoted as stating that she had long since lost track of what her proper profession is – “either a professional writer who plays poker as a hobby – or a professional poker player who writes as a hobby?”
Victoria Coren was born in North London to a family with considerable journalistic interests, with her late father being the well-known journalist Alan Coren. At the just 14, Vicky showed that she had a gift for writing by winning a competition in the Daily Telegraph, from where she was signed up to write a column about life as a teenager in the United Kingdom, which continued for a number of years. She also recalls that round about that time she first began to learn to play poker thanks to her older brother Giles, also also a journalist as well as being a more than competent player.
Victoria began to gain recognition has a poker player, increasingly appearing on a number of televised tournaments in the UK with her undoubted breakthrough coming in 2006 when she won her first European Poker Championship, with that year’s tournament being staged in London, and saw her take-home a check valued at £940, 000 ($1.5 million).
When she is not taking part in televised tournaments or appearing on quiz shows, Vicky keeps her writing skills up-to-date, having also the number of plays and novels as well as her autobiography, aptly titled “For Richer, For Poorer: A Love Affair with Poker.”