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Victoria Coren Mitchell

Melvin Schroen

PokerListings Author

November 9, 2022 · 4 minutes to read

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Victoria Elizabeth Coren Mitchell is a British write, presenter, and professional poker player. She writes weekly columns, and books. She is also the host of the BBC television show ‘Only Connect’ since 2008. She became famous in the poker industry by winning first the EPT Main Event London (EPT) for $941,513 in 2006, followed by another win during EPT San-Remo in 2014, scooping the first prize of $660,947. With these two wins she would be the first player in EPT history to have won two Main Event titles.

Growing Up in London

Victoria was born in Hammersmith, West London. She is the only daughter of Alan Coren and Anne Kasriel and was brought up together with her brother Giles Coren in Cricklewood, North London. Her whole youth she has attended independent girls’ schools. At the age of 14 she started her writing career by having published a short story in ‘Just Seventeen’ magazine and then won a competition in ‘The Daily Telegraph’ by writing a column about teenage life. Later one she published several books such as ‘Love 16’ and ‘Once More, with Feeling’, and she managed to write more weekly columns as well for various newspapers and magazines. She also wrote a poker memoir called ‘’For Richer, For Poorer: A Love Affair with Poker’.

Rolling Into the Poker Business

Way before the poker boom, caused by Chris Moneymaker, Victoria Coren was already active in the British poker felts. Since 2001 we can find back results of her playing mainly smaller buy-in tournaments. As she was already well-known by the British public, she even got invited for several Celebrity poker tournaments, in which she won her first real title as well during the Celebrity Poker Club Series 2 in Cardiff, collecting $45,745 for her outstanding performance. Several years later, in 2006, the poker world also got her introduced. During the European Poker Tour Main Event in London, she bested a field of 398 players and collected her biggest prize to date of $941,513.

During the first 8 years of her career all of her cashes were on British soil, accept one cash during the World Series in 2007. Mainly because she always had said to be afraid of flying with airplanes. PokerStars saw the potential of Victoria and signed her as a Pokerstars Ambassador, due to this she also went on to play major events abroad.

You can perfectly see in her timeline of her cashes, that she was not playing every single tournament she could find. This because she also has a professional career as a writer, presenter, and above all, she is a public figure in Great Britain. Ever since she signed the contract with PokerStars, she also went on to play bigger buy-in events and a bunch of invitational events. It would take until the year 2014 where she would bring her name high up in poker history as she would be the first ever poker player to win two EPT Main Event titles! During the San-Remo EPT she bested a field of 556 players and took home $660,947. An incredible performance which is it to date only achieved by one other player as well, in the name of Mikalai Pobal.

Soon after she won her second EPT title, she said goodbye to PokerStars as she was not amused by the fact that PokerStars added the live casino to its poker client. She explained that she signed up to promote poker, and not another way of gambling in the likes of casino games.

Life Is Not Just About Poker

In the past 5 to 8 years there are not many cashes to be seen from her in the live circuit. She got married with David Mitchell, an English comedian and actor, and gave birth to a daughter in August 2012. Together with all this, she has a professional career on television and is still often to be found in newspapers and magazines with her columns about all sorts of things in life.

We are not worried she won’t be seen any more in the poker felts, on- or offline, because poker is going through her veins she has once said. She is heart-warming, interesting, much respected, and ranked as one of the top 5 female poker players in the UK.

High Scores:

You want to follow Victoria Coren Mitchell and her poker career? Make sure to follow her on one of her socials:

www.twitter.com/victoriacoren (681K followers)

www.instagram.com/victoriacoren/ (5,5K followers)

Image Credit: crdsu.org