Victoria Coren, an English professional poker player, is well-known by her pseudonyms “Teacup” and “Vicky” in the poker circle. A proverbial “Jenny of all trades”, Oxford graduate, Victoria Coren is also a popular television presenter, a newspaper columnist, and an author. She is the daughter of the late humorist and journalist, Alan Coren and she has a sister, Giles Coren, who is also a journalist.
When Victoria Coren is not writing, she regularly visits the Victoria Casino in London. It was there that she started playing poker and now, she has specialized in both tournaments and cash games. In the course of her poker career, she became a close friend of “The Hendon Mob”, a group of four professional poker players from London, England.
Victoria Coren made her presence felt in the international poker circuit, when she entered the European Championship and participated in the Pot-Limit Hold'em event in 2003.
In the next edition of the European Championship, Victoria Coren took part in the Pot-Limit Hold'em event and outlasted almost 170 event entrants to finish in the second place. For her impressive second-place finish, she earned prize money worth $27,952. In the same tournament, she also participated in the Pot-Limit Omaha Hi/Lo event and her fourth-place finish earned her $3,989.
A major breakthrough in her career came in the year 2006, when Victoria Coren took part in Event #6 – European Poker Tour (EPT) No-Limit Hold'em Championship of the European Poker Championships/EPT Event Season 3. In this event, held at the Grosvenor Victoria Casino, she outplayed all 400 participants and made it to the final table, where she got into heads-up confrontation with Emad Tahtouh, an Australian professional poker player. After an exhaustive final table play, she made an outstanding first-place finish and became the first woman to win an EPT title with prize money worth $937,350.
After her mindboggling performance at the EPT, Victoria Coren tried her hand in the No-Limit Hold'em Championship of the Blue Square Grosvenor UK Poker Tour (GUKPT) in 2007. In the same year, she made her maiden appearance in the 38th Annual World Series of Poker (WSOP) held at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas. She participated in Event #45 - No-Limit Hold'em Short Handed and $6,159 in prize money was added to her bankroll.
Victoria Coren has appeared in five episodes of Late Night Poker, a television show, and is also the proud winner of the television poker game show Celebrity Poker Club, in which she won against professional poker player Willie Thorne. Later, Victoria Coren became the commentator for the third series of the same TV show.
Writing seems to run in her blood as Victoria Coren combined her love for poker with her love for writing. She writes weekly columns for “The Observer” and also writes poker-related articles in the periodical "The Guardian”. She has published an assortment of books that include Love 16, King Lear: Fathers and Daughters, and Once More with Feelings.
Besides writing and playing poker, this “All Rounder Queen” is the presenter of the BBC TV program Balderdash and Piffle. She also anchors the BBC Radio 4’s “Off the Page” show. Currently, Victoria Coren is ranked among the top four female poker players in Europe.
Victoria Coren is a member of Team PokerStars, and plays online under the screen name “Vicky Coren”. As of 2008, her total live tournament winnings exceed $1,100,000 in just 8 cashes.