Almira Skripchenko is well-known in the chess world. She is a strong GM, a long time leader of
the French women team, a member of ACP Board and just a very nice woman. And after all, she plays
very well poker. That is a good reason for our internet poker school
PokerStrategy to make an interview with Almira.
1. Almira, my late congratulations to you win in French Woman Championship! Can you tell about
your next chess plans?
Thank you for your kind words, even if it seems like a very easy task since I was a favourite
from the beginning it is always very difficult to win a national championship for the third
time in a row :) The French Chess federation has made a lot of efforts in order to improve the
conditions for women chessplayers and to encourage the best players to take part in the national
championship. Of course, the level of the tournament is not that strong compared to the Russian
Women's Championship, but I hope that in some years the level of women's chess in France will
increase dramatically. My next tournament will start this week, it is a rapid tournament in Cap
d'Agde, which is unique in it's genre: the organizers managed to invite almost all of the best
junior players of the world including Radjabov, Carlsen and Karjakin, the world's leading women
chessplayers represented by Kosteniuk, Koneru, Stefanova and Zhao, and the best French players,
where after Bacrot, Fressinet, Vachier-Lagrave and Sebag, I can include myself :) The professor's
role in this tournament is played by Anatoly Karpov and it will be the first time in my life that
I will face one of the world champions over the board. Actually, I like to play rapid games very
much, so I will try to show my best against the strongest field I have ever played in my life.
2. You are the most famous Woman Grandmaster playing poker. How and why did you start to play
this game?
The story of my poker beginning is quite amusing. Some years ago I came back to Paris from a
series of chess tournaments feeling extremely tired. As usual I called up my friends to find out
what kind of cultural programme were we having that week, and thinking about going to theatre.
How surprised I was when I got an answer that in an hour they were going to start playing in a ...
poker tournament! Till that moment all the general knowledge I had about the game of poker came
mostly from literature and movies, so I was quite intriguided by the fact that nowdays there were
poker tournaments organized all over the world. After a hint of hesitation, I asked if I could
take part in this tournament, having in mind of course the epic image of closed poker games
everyone was so familiar with. You can, the answer was, but you would have to learn the rules
when we will pick you up, you have ten minutes of a taxi ride to learn how to play Texas Holdem!
Obviously I was up to the challenge :) Can't be as complicated as a chess game, I said to myself,
and I can always learn while the tournament will be in progress. So after learning the basic
rules of Texas Holdem and being given a strict advice to play only with very strong hands like AA,
KK, QQ , JJ and A, K and AQ :) I started the 50 euros rebuy tournament. My professors,
Grandmasters as well were very sceptic and incredibly ironic about my chances of surviving the
first ten minutes of the competition . What else can I say, I ended up at fifth , eliminating
both of them on my way to the final table :) Of course I was very happy about my result,
especially considering the fact that I was a complete beginner, but I had to admit to myself that
I got very competitive from the very beginning in my attitude towards poker and that I wanted to
get more experienced and to improve my understanding of the game, which is full of complex
elements. I started to play on the internet as well and gradually got familiar with other
variations of the game.
3. Could you tell about your offline poker successes? Where do you prefer to play in Paris?
Actually I prefer to play live poker tournaments, it is incredible how much information you can
get by observing your opponents, and at the beginning I had to go against my nature in order to
learn how to do that. In chess, the ethics of the behaviour is very respectful towards your
opponent and always very silent, when in poker emotions are not so easy to control and you can
find yourself in a very unusual situation where your opponent is talking to you or staring at
you in order to find out if you are bluffing :). So whenever I have a chance to take part in a
live competition I always do it. In Paris, I always play at the Aviation Club which has a very
old gaming tradition (at some point you could even play blitz there!) and where poker tournaments
are organized every day! I got quite experience by playing the tournaments with a small buy-in,
from 10 to 50 euros in a field of 200 participants and several times since my first competition
I finished at the final table, my best place being the 4th. This year I was invited to take part
in a televison show "Tournoi des AS " (tournament of the Aces) aired on Paris Premiere, where many
French celebrities took part. The first prize of this tournament, sponsored by PartyPoker, was
the 10 000 dollars buy-in for the PartyPoker Million Cruise. After having won my preliminary
table, I was playing the final where almost everyone was a professional poker player, I was
quite intimidated at the beginning, but at the end it was heads-up against a two times European
Bridge Champion, Michel Abekasiss, who is now a very successful poker player. Unfortunately, this
was my first live experience of the heads-up, and even if I was a huge chip-leader, I lost this
encounter. The show had a very large audience and thanks to my performance (the poker one, not
the acting one! :) I was contacted by the French Poker room Poker.fr who wanted to sponsor my
participation at the Ladies World Poker Championship, one of the WSOP tournaments in Las Vegas.
I was very honoured, so here I was sitting at the poker table in Las Vegas and playing my first
World Championship! I wasn't very lucky, since I was eliminated rather quickly and I still
remember how the hand was played. My opponent was completely unaware that I trapped her with my
full house, but ... poker is not exactly the ... exact science :) Unlike in chess, you can not
calculate the variations till the very end, and control everything. The river came, and my
opponent has seen one of the 7 cards she needed. Meanwhile, the French soccer team lost on
penalties and the title ... It was not our day! I hope that all the experience I am getting from
playing these tournaments will result in a victory of a major event one day.
4. Which poker variations and limits do you play oline at the moment?
At the moment I mostly play on Pokerstars and PartyPoker which offer very high level of poker and
a variety of choices. I prefer cash games on Pokerstars, and usually I play 3/6 and 5/10 limits,
short-handed, and tournaments on PartyPoker, especially sit and go. I remember a period when I
was only playing this type of tournaments and winning almost 30 of them in a row :) I also try to
play satellites in order to qualify for bigger tournaments and have done so several times.
5. What can you tell about poker in France in general and among the French chessplayers?
Poker has became very popular in France over the past 5 years thanks to the popularity of many
television shows dedicated to the game and to the general shift of the public opinion which no
longer perceives poker as a gambling game but almost as a sport with a very well established
structure of tournaments. This phenomenon did not spare French chessplayers who have quickly
adopted the game as their favourite pass-time during the tournaments. As an example, all the
members of the French Olympic team play poker very well!
6. How important is poker in your life? Is the game only your hobby or a nice extra income as well?
Although I am dedicating a lot of time to poker and I am enjoying the game very much, for the
moment I have to admit that it is still a hobby for me even if it is generating an extra income.
I am not a magician, I am still learning and who knows, one day I might become one of the rare
professional women players.
7. PokerStrategy holds the opinion that chessplayers have a lot of qualities which are very useful in poker.
Did chess experience help you in poker?
I do think that chessplayers possess many of the necessary qualities in order to become strong
pokerplayers. The ability to concentrate for a long period of time, analytical abilities,
calculating numerous numbers of variations, calculating probabilities, all these qualities are
very natural for a chessplayer and are very important in poker. Thus it is much easier for a
chessplayer to get used to the game and to the pressure during the tournaments then for an
average beginner. My chessplayer background has helped me a lot in my poker progress, although I
have to admit that at the beginning it was very difficult for me to accept the part of the game
where nothing depends on my own skills but sometimes on the cards :) But so is life sometimes, and
I think that I became more patient thanks to poker!
8. Especially nowadays the professional chess players should strive more to earn enough for
living. What is your opinion about the possibility of combination of two occupations - chessplayer
and pokerplayer?
Nowadays, when many chessplayers have turned towards poker, the question of the possibility of a
combination of two occupations is becoming very natural. I think that chessplayers in general can
show many good results in poker and win prizes almost in every tournament, this part attracts many
of us, when compared to chess, you have to accumulate a lot of knowledge without winning anything
for a long period of time. Still there shouldn't be an illusion about the ease with which you can
win money in poker, it is an incredibly complex game, the education and training are very
important to progress in poker as in any other competitive field. I find it very difficult to
maintain both activities on a professional level, but I know of many examples of top chessplayers
which combine both activities very successfully.
9. A couple of months ago you became a member of
PokerStrategy. How useful is our side for you?
Some months ago I became a member of Pokerstrategy, since I am very interested in all sorts of
educational materials published on poker. It is not easy to be "autodidacte" in poker so I am
trying to learn as much as I can from books and pokersites, and I have to say that PokerStrategy
offers the opportunity for all chessplayers to find a lot of educational material specially
designed for them. The site offers a big variety of poker news and theory lessons, online coaching,
forum discussions, and what is very important, is the fact that it exists in several languages.
Taking into account that most of the poker educational material is published in English only this
is rather unique. Good luck to all of you in your poker beginnings and who knows one day we might
meet at the poker table!
Almira, thank you very much for the interview!
The interview was taken by Rustem Dautov,
Adminstrator of Russian version of PokerStrategy
