When I arrived on the tournament floor at the Emperors Palace casino in South Africa, it was good to see Leo Margets in the last three of the six max side event.
Unfortunately, she had to settle for third spot as the luck evaded her once again. It’s been over a year since she signed the most important contract of her short life, so does working for the world’s largest poker company add extra pressure when the results are not rolling in?
“When the results are not there, then you feel the pressure, but the patch doesn’t add anymore pressure than I used to place on myself before I joined PokerStars. I have always been a very competitive person anyway, and I apply my own pressure.
“That being said if you don’t do well for a year, you feel like you need that title. But it’s important that you don’t get too anxious because it can affect your confidence, performance and your overall play.
“I think I have handled this part of my game well. Trying to keep playing my game, improving and evolving – it’s tough. I have had very little results in the past 12 month, and yet it’s something that all players have to go through. Volume is also very important and I haven’t played that much. There is a lot of variance in live tournament poker, so you have to play a lot, but despite everything I feel ready to change all that.”
If this interview is viewed as mundane, uninteresting garbage, then my boss might could easily hire a different writer. Mt performance as a writer is measured by the company I work for. So how does this work for a PokerStars employee?
“PokerStars understand the game so they don’t put pressure on you to get results. There are a lot of excellent players who have excellent results that are never going to be PokerStars pros. You need to be a great ambassador and this doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to be a top class poker player. It’s like a part time job. You need to understand the values of the brand and represent them around the world, and have certain characteristics in your personality. Obviously, you need some results in order to get noticed at first, but it’s more than that. It’s a combination of factors.”
Margets flits around the tables like a buzzing bee, always searching, always on the move. She always strikes me as a person who is on a mission, so what exactly is that mission?
“I am a bit of a geek and love studying. I like to increase my education and have always been very interesting in non language communication and emotional intelligence, which is also related to poker, but my interest is not purely poker related. It’s more of a Plan B – who knows what I will be doing in 20 years time. I love my poker and would like to always be playing, but you never know what could happen?
“You need to be prepared in case things change. So I am going to Manchester where I will be undertaking a 10-day training course on emotional intelligence and non-language communication, then you need to pass an exam and if you are successful you get to go through another seven day course, more exams and then finally you become qualified to become an official trainer.”
What else does Margets like to do in her spare time?
“I love writing and I have always seen myself writing a column or a weekly article, I love writing. I also imagine myself teaching and from time to time companies hire me to teach poker as a negotiating tool, which is very interesting. Being able to exploit my knowledge of poker to CEO’s of top companies is very interesting. We learn from each other and it’s something I enjoy a lot.”
Marget’s talks about her life in two very different dimensions. There is her job and the bubble of the poker world, and then there is ‘real world’ as she coins it. So what do her friends in the ‘real world’ think of Leo Margets?
“My friends from the ‘real world help me keep my feet on the ground. They would describe me as optimistic, someone who fights for what they want, someone who is persistent and a perfectionist.”
What moves her?
“Unfairness makes me emotional. As you grow up you start to realise that life is not fair and that sucks. When you see people trying very hard, but life just treats them bad.”
Does she believe in the law of attraction?
“I am a believer. Not in a mystical way, and i’m not the type of person who annoys you by continually referencing the importance of being optimistic, but it’s important for me that when things don’t go my way I don’t get frustrated and instead I learn from failure.
“Spanish culture has a very bad attitude towards failure. The American culture know that failure is positive and that you cannot succeed in anything without first experiencing failure, but in Spain failure is seen in a negative light.
“I believe failure is a very positive thing because you get to learn from it and grow.“
When you have an attitude like Leo Margets, then I have no doubt that failure will only spur her on to greater things, both inside her bubble and in the ‘real world.”
