Victorious Vicky Coren the Million Dollar Poker Winner
How top female poker columinist won £500,000!
$1,000,000 WOMAN! Vicky Coren, the well known TV presenter and poker writer, has just become the first woman to win the recent European Poker Tour and an impressive $1,000,000! This just goes to underline the “girl power” now sweeping through poker thanks to the internet. There are at least a dozen women now who can make a million dollars a year playing poker and a legion of housewives boosting the household budget on a weekly basis with their evening efforts at Texas Hold’em after a tough day at the office or raising the kids. Sometimes both. All this should serve to shut up the surviving macho dinosaurs who have always thought women had only started playing poker because it was suddenly “fashionable” and safe.
HOW SHE BROKE THE BANK The final “heads up” play between Vicky and Emad Tahtouh only lasted two hands in the full glare of the TV cameras. First hand, Vicky called all of Emad’s bets down to the river using half of her bankroll. This resulted in a board reading Five-Eight-Ten-Two-Nine. Emad turned over Jack-Eight for a pair of Eights only to be beaten by Vicky’s Queen-Ten which she’d backed down all the streets in a gutsy show of aggression. Vicky now had chip dominance and it didn’t take her long to administer the coup de grace. The final flop produced an enticing Three-Four-Five. Emad heaved in his stack bravely drawing with a Six-Eight but no Seven came. In a much deserved final gift from Lady Luck, Vicky was holding the nuts with Six-Seven completing her girl power run through to a million dollars.
WINNING AT THE WYNN Having just returned from Las Vegas I can report that the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Global Gaming are all alive and well in the City where anything is worth a wager. Sitting in the amazing indoor arena that houses “Le Reve”, the latest show from Cirque Du Soleil genius Franco Dragone, I watched with my jaw on my knees as five guys dived from two hundred feet into a pool which must’ve looked the size of a thimble. Naturally the pool was on fire at the time (No. I don’t know how they do that) The pure Vegas touch was added by the two poker players next to me who were offering long odds on the chance that one of the divers “wouldn’t make it” by the end of the show’s guaranteed extensive run. So that was the Ugly. The Bad was watching in disbelief as a very wealthy Canadian poker player lost a monster hand due to his obsession for wearing sunglasses. I wasn’t in the best position but even I could see the reflection of a hole card Ace in the left lens of his Ray Bans. I thought that only happened in TV adverts or cartoons. Apparently not. The Good? That would be me winning at the Wynn and paying for my trip.
