«Kara Scott’s Story

Kara Scott is a famous TV-star and poker player, based in Canada. She is even considered a symbol of poker, a person, who is always there, when there is a need of someone to stand out and make the poker industry look wonderful. During Poker Festival in Barcelona she told many interesting things about balancing in life and helping people in need.

Kara Scott has conferred many favors on poker, helped a great number of poker organizations, so poker people are greatly impressed with this beautiful woman. It’s not easy to stop admiring her, because one glance at her is enough to feel her enormous confidence and charisma. She looks like a person who has gained the great success in life. But does anyone know the real Kara? Who is she, when the light turns down, all the cameras are switched off and Kara becomes herself?

We were lucky enough to get 30 minutes of Kara’s precious time at Poker Festival in Barcelona. And we can’t wait to tell you all about what we heard.

At first she told us about 888Poker, because she is an ambassador of this brand. We noticed that this brand was greatly improving and Kara agreed with us. She confirmed a great push, a huge level-up of the brand, and stressed that it all had begun before. Today everyone sees the progress that was started long ago. 888poker has changed its focus, now this brand greatly takes care for its customers and does everything possible to improve their experience in poker playing.

Now 888poker offers customers online poker and live poker. During numerous poker tournaments the company tries to turn their experience into a fairy-tale. The tournaments take place in beautiful vacation spots, including Barcelona. So 888pokers take the poker players there to give them fantastic time. And online poker at 888 is fun too, because the system is thoroughly encrypted and perfectly safe.

Kara named the company’s new strategy as “Taking Back the Game”. Its focus is its customers and its task is giving them the best experience and fun of poker. For the last several years pokers has changed, it has developed, and sometimes its evolution shows us some unsatisfactory sides. 888poker is striving to take all the best achievements of the poker history and get away from the bad sides of this evolution.

The company takes care for its customers, listens to them and makes improvements according to their wishes. Serious players, the real whales, are very important for the poker world and 888poker is only a part of it. Though sometimes this company gets much attention from the media, some players prefer playing somewhere else, so, the company’s task is to hear their wishes and offer them great experience.

Then Kara told us about recreational players. Their main trouble is their having little time for playing and 888 is trying to solve this problem by offering them many different variants, including fast ones. So 888 offers both long tournaments (because some poker players love them) and fast variants for those who have work and family and want to play it fast and spend as little time as possible.

Fast game is crucial for recreational players, because they are busy people and they can’t prefer poker when they have children and work. But fast is not enough, 888 is trying to combine fast play with good experience and fun. It’s necessary for recreational players to feel the real pleasure of poker. It’s like going to movies: you spend some money on the ticket, you look forward to having a good time and enjoying the movie. Of course, you will be greatly disappointed when you find out that the movie is terrible. It will be a waste of both time and money. So 888poker doesn’t want their customers to regret the money and time they spent on poker playing.

After that Kara shared her impressions on the live tournament, which had happened in Barcelona. Kara was really excited by the competitive environment, live streaming and fantastic World Series. That’s what poker players wanted all this time and finally they got it! Kara compared it with renaissance because there are so many innovative ideas and healthy competitive atmosphere in Barcelona. This tournament proved that poker is good, because it’s healthy.

After discussing live tournaments, Kara moved to some WSOP changes that had affected her personally. She spoke highly on returning to the tradition of playing the final table in the summer, because it gives another couple of days off. That’s great and useful because poker players can hype the final together with the pre-show and at the same time have a little sleep. So, the whole tournament goes without any loss of time and without any changes of the game flow.

Then Kara described her working process, which is going to be a bit more complicated with the coming changes. She normally took 3 months for gathering the necessary information and then she researched and tried to prepare questions for each of the players, their family and friends. On the day of the event she came to the final table absolutely prepared and knowing everything about every single player. That was useful for the players too, because they were not disturbed while they were concentrated on winning. But now, since the changes came, Kara can’t be prepared at all! Though it may seem a bit complicated, because Kara is a chronic over-planner, she finds it really exciting.

So we can see that Kara is really enjoying the changes. She says that she loves doing the Break-Desk for the live-stream and not only the final table. She loves that part of her job and even calls it her favorite one. She likes sitting at the desk and talking about the previous and the next levels, about the poker players. So she really enjoys herself at those moments and she hopes to get more of it.

Then Kara compared herself with Sofia Lovgren, another poker start. She says she greatly admires Sofia, especially her confidence both in life and in poker. She confessed that she secretly wishes to get the same confidence as Sofia, because sometimes she does get butterflies and feel pressure working live, because there is no room for any mistake and it can be a bit scary. Kara says that working live takes more concentration and focus and it’s a bit hard to do that for about two weeks or even more in a row. Being focused and concentrated for about 12 hours a day makes Kara nervous, but in good sense, in “excited” meaning.

Then we talked to Kara about her Italian experience. She is learning Italian at the moment and wants to get settled in Italy, because she greatly loves this country. She used to live there before going to Slovenia and she loved this country too. Though Kara is not living in Italy at the moment, she is still learning the language of this country. She has good language practice with her in-laws, because they speak Italian well enough. Though they speak English too, Kara tries to talk to them in Italian, willing to show them how hard she tries and how much she respects her relatives. She stresses that it’s rather challenging to be in a marriage with a person coming from another culture and speaks another language. It’s crucial to meet somewhere in the middle. Her husband’s name is Giovanni, he speaks English perfectly though it’s not his mother tongue, but still there are things that he can’t express in English deeply enough, that’s why Kara wants to understand her husband’s native language. That’s how much she loves her husband, because she’s even ready to learn Italian for him.

Well, it’s not easy to imagine how Kara manages to find time for learning a new language, because she seems extremely busy. The secret is Kara’s skills at time management. Actually she’s learning to manage her time properly, because she used to spend years and years headlong and sometimes she had no time to breathe. Of course sooner or later she had to change this situation. At the moment Kara has much more energy than before, so she is using a part of it on language learning. Unfortunately she still has no time for taking proper classes, because she’s travelling all the time. Instead she uses Duolingo almost everyday. She tries to hit her goals at this app and this fact makes her feel good and happy. If she doesn’t manage to hit her goals, she feels sad. That’s the way gambling thrills helps her learn.

As an experienced traveler, Kara willingly shared some secrets and some advice for those who want to travel too, but are too scared. She confessed that sometimes she feels fear too, and at those moments she asks herself about what awful things can happen. When her mind tries to imagine all the awful things that can happen, she analyses her fears and comes to the conclusion that those things are not awful at all.

Then Kara shared with us her philosophy of life. She says that spending life on doing favorite things is much more important than just making money. Of course, not everyone can choose between those two options and Kara feels extremely lucky because she can do what she likes and get money for that. Apart from working Kara loves spending time with her family and friends. She tries to improve her relationships with those she loves. When Kara has to travel somewhere, she had to miss some important events that happen to her relatives and friends: birthdays or weddings. Of course, she is unhappy with this situation, and she’s trying to improve it.

Kara has relatives in Canada and Italy, and she has to move constantly between those two countries. She misses her parents greatly and tries to visit them as frequently as possible. Kara couldn’t get a Canadian passport for a long time and that’s why she even missed her parent’s wedding anniversary.

But luckily enough she spends much time online with her parents, using Snapchat. All her relatives use this app as a family messager, that’s how modern they are. She considers her life strange enough, because she travels to many different countries and can’t see her parents. That’s why she appreciates Snapchat so much and affirms that even relationships online can be meaningful, if it’s impossible to see the nearest and dearest face to face.

Then Kara shared with us her views concerning the contemporary situation in the whole world. Many people think that due to Trump and Brexit the world tends to become more divided, more separated. Kara confessed that she doesn’t care much about this, because she doesn’t feel herself the target of any negativism and hate. She focuses herself upon her family and her work, but still she considers it necessary to stand up and speak for those who are the target of hatred and racism, for those who need help. She feels responsible for those people, because even her nearest and dearest can be touched by the tough world situation.

So when she sees injustice, she doesn’t keep silence, and that may annoy people around her, sometimes even her friends. Kara doesn’t mean any abuse though, she doesn’t agree with the opinion that there can be only two types of conversation: agreement or abuse. She believes in possibility of a dialogue. She feels that she must defend the ones being abused, help them solve their problems.

The next point of our discussion was immigration. Kara agreed that people get influenced by the media and create bigotry which she doesn’t like. She believes that bigotry divides people and preserves the power structure. That’s why sometimes media make us feel and think what we don’t really want to. But we all have power to resist, and this power is called free will. Kara believes in free will, she is sure that everybody has it. The big problem of the whole humanity is the fact that we don’t exercise and use our free will well enough. Some feel better thinking that the media totally rules the world, that human beings are nothing but puppets handled by newspaper and the news, but Kara says that it’s our responsibility to control our thoughts and actions. She believes that there is a thousand of small choices facing us every minute. And it’s impossible to make the right one all the time. Kara is sure that about half of her choices is wrong, because the truth is hidden from people. Everyone gets sheltered in their own bubble, and the bubble can be a country, a family, favorite books or movies, friends and job. But the bubble mustn’t take our responsibility for our actions and thoughts. Kara doesn’t consider it right to pass the people who are being hurt or abused without helping them. The reason for such behavior is the fact that the media brainwash us, or maybe we prefer the path of the smallest resistance.

Kara mentioned that people tend to get defensive when they are in trouble, and she doesn’t approve such behavior. She says that she tries to think it over when she starts feeling defensive. She tries to find reasons for that. It’s easier to think that people who criticize you are all bad, and it’s hard to ask oneself questions about the reasons for such criticism. Maybe the criticizing people are right. That’s what Kara tries to do. She admits that it’s not easy to listen to other people, understand their point of view and sometimes admit her own mistakes.

Kara confessed that she has been quiet for several months. She is analyzing the global events in the whole world, the political satiation, the struggle between political parties. She feels that she and her nearest and dearest are targeted by the political situation and it’s not easy for her to speak up, but she feels the responsibility and needs to strengthen her voice.

But still she is looking for some balance between emotions and respect, quietness and anger, social media and loneliness. Kara doesn’t consider herself loud enough. She’s been pretty quiet for the past year, because she had many events in her own, private life. It wasn’t an easy year for her and she wasn’t happy to be present on social media at that period.

She says that she’s been through some stressful days. Earlier she cared about people’s opinion on her and that didn’t bring her happiness. Now she’s tired to care for any personal comments directed to her.

Now she only cares for her boss’ opinion and her friends and family’s opinion. She only needs feedback from them and no one more. She don’t care about angry thoughts of some random stranger. She just thinks that it’s a bit sad and mutes those negative voices.