Sofia Lovgren: A Day in the Life…
Friday, 4 January 2013
At just 23-years-old, Sweden’s Sofia is living the dream as a PKR pro. But it’s not all jettsetting and photoshoots – Sofia grinds hard, works hard for her sponsors and takes her job as a poker player deadly seriously. Bluff Europe looks at a day in the life of a modern sponsored pro.
“When I’m travelling, a lot of exciting things happen all the time but when I’m home it’s quite different and very ordinary. My days vary, depending on whether I’m in Gothenburg or in my second home Catania, Sicily. On an average day in Gothenburg I wake up around noon. I eat breakfast and surf a little online. I go out in the city and do something, usually together with my boyfriend. I start to play cash games in the afternoon. I grind online and also enter some tournaments at the same time. We have a dinner around 8pm, watch some TV and then play poker the whole evening.
“My boyfriend is Luca Moschitta, a PokerStars Supernova Elite. It works extremely well since we share the same interest in poker and have the same daily life. We also schedule the same live tournaments so we have a great opportunity to travel a lot and experience the world together.”
“The contract with PKR gives me an opportunity to play the biggest live tournaments around the world. For my part, I write articles for PKR, I’m active in their friendly community, I play on PKR a lot and represent them at live events.
“What I love most about poker is that I can travel and see the world at the same time as I’m playing poker. I’m my own boss and have huge freedom to plan my days just as I like. I can work just as well on a sailing boat on the Swedish west coast as from our summer house in Sicily or from a hotel room in Bahamas. I just open my laptop and I’m at work. Poker is also my favorite hobby, so it’s amazing to be able to live so well from something that you love and think is so much fun."
"
She shouldn't be a pro"“She shouldn’t be a pro,” said Neil Channing of Sofia, speaking on the live feed at the 2010 Irish Open. “There are tonnes of Scandies here that are good pros, but they’re not sponsored, probably because they don’t look good.”
But Sofia was discussed as a potential PKR pro before they knew what she looked like, on the back of her impressive ring game volume and profit, and contribution to the site’s community. Her looks, Mr Channing, were a mere accident of birth.
“There are some women sponsored for their looks,” says Sofia, “but I know several female players that are really good and respected poker players. When PKR invited me to London they had only seen my results online and knew I was a girl.”