If you’ve ever played in a major European event, or a U.S. one for that matter, there is a good chance you will have had Jen Mason staring you up and down, counting your chips and scribbling away on a notepad. Jen is a blogger for the popular UK forum BlondePoker and is one of the people responsible for providing  us with up-to-the-minute information on the chip counts, bust-outs and bad beats from the biggest tournaments in Europe.

    But more recently Jen has been on the other side of the velvet rail and is proving to be a force at the poker table.  Jen won the deep-stack Green Joker Poker Festival in Ireland earlier this year and was recently seen bulldozing the opposition in the European Ladies’ Championships on Sky Sports, only to fall short at the final table. She is making a late surge in the UK rankings.

    Jen was taught poker as a child in London by her American parents.

     “Mum was always really competitive – we always played Gin Rummy, which I’m now really good at, much better at that than as a poker player. I’d rather do that but nobody really plays other than  grandmas. So mum was really ultra- competitive and she always paid up when she lost, but she won most of the time, which was harsh but fair.

    “We played poker, too, we played limit, some Omaha, some strange high-low variants. We played with a lot of professional degenerates, not professional  players but doctors and lawyers and  people like that.” 

Wheeling and Dealing

It was this early exposure to poker that saw her turn to dealing after graduating from university, where she was introduced to Tony (Tikay) Kendall of Blondepoker fame, and a new Blonde legend was born.

    “I was going through a period where I needed a safety-net job. I was dealing two days a week at the Gutshot; that’s where I met Tikay and we hit it off. We started travelling around to the tournaments together and he took me to Vegas in 2005 for the World Series. Back then I used to have to do updates in the hallways because I didn’t have a press pass.

    “I sat in that hallway for two weeks and it sucked. It was freezing in that hallway and I had to adopt a guerrilla style of live update where I would sneak into the cardroom and get thrown out every half hour. That was my introduction to blogging.”

    Jen was one of the first bloggers in Europe, honing her skills before tournaments became the media frenzies they are today.

    “It was bigger in America at the time, nothing like it is now. Some of the tournaments would just have us and Rolf (Slotbloom), who was always really into it for some reason.”

    Jen was spending all her time with her laptop travelling from tournament to tournament worldwide. I first met Jen in a pressroom at the EPT in Dortmund where we became friends. What struck me instantly about her is how popular she was in the poker community and more significantly, how respected she was by the poker players. She is particularly good friends with Roland de Wolfe, who even offered to buy her into the WSOP Main Event if she stopped smoking.

    “Yes, he did, awesome, he’s a true gent and I haven’t smoked a cigarette still even though I could now, even though I quite want to. If I’d managed to give him a decent return on his money, instead of crashing and burning on Day 1, I would have now consumed a big bunch of tobacco. But seeing as I didn’t I think it’s only sportsmanlike to give up as he genuinely wants me to stop for some reason.” 

She Wins Green Joker

Earlier this year I joined Jen in Drogheda, Ireland, for the Green Joker Poker Festival. Jen persuaded me to play by telling me what a great structure it was, and she was right. Regrettably for me I bombed at the end of Day 1, which gave me plenty of time to sit around and watch her win it.

    “It was nice to have so many chips – that was a pretty awesome feeling on its own. I rank it right up there with that feeling when you wake up and realise you don’t have to get up, so you can go back to sleep again – that’s my all-time favourite feeling.”

    Since then Jen has been known more for playing than updating and although she hasn’t given up the live updates just yet, her big win really has marked her arrival on the UK circuit.

    “I am well known for updating, but I’m also well known for always being skint. Updating isn’t very well paid and it also takes up all your time, so winning the Green Joker festival was a catalyst for change. I saved up for months for that tournament, which is embarrassing – you’d think Id be able to spin that amount of money up online, but I couldn’t.”

    Recently, Jen has been pigeonholed on a lot of the UK forums as being the third-best female player in England, after Lucy Rokach and Vicky Coren. I asked her what her thoughts were on this.

    “It’s bollocks, it’s complete bollocks. I think it’s lame to accept it as a major accolade if you’re a woman anything, unless it’s something that is specifically separated gender-wise, like women’s tennis. You’re the best at women’s tennis if you’re a woman, but there isn’t such a thing as women’s poker.”

    Before I even have time to mention her participation in her second televised women’s event (the Women’s Open, where she came second), she continues:

    “It’s horrible because I’m a huge stinking hypocrite. I’m getting put in this Party Poker Women’s Open. If I was a little more bothered I would have tortured myself for even considering selling out, and if I paid my own money it would have to be some massive prize pool. But when people offer to pay you into it, it’s hard to say no, so very hard (Jen is sponsored by poker.co.uk).

    “If I’m going to be a hypocrite, I may as well embrace it.”

    Although Jen Mason is well known and liked in the UK poker community for her update work, she is now truly making a name for herself on the merit of her playing ability.

     In the next 12 months you can expect to see more updates on Jen Mason, rather than updates by Jen Mason.