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Behind the Scenes with European Poker Tour Floor Person Kate Badurek
- Updated: August 6, 2016
If you read the recaps of big live poker tournaments, you’ll notice it’s all about the poker players. This player wins another big title, that player is in an excellent position for his next bracelet, and another player got knocked out in cruel fashion. Rightfully so, as players are front and center in live poker tournaments, but there are equally important people working hard behind the scenes.
A tournament room is crowded with people with all sorts of jobs and from all walks of life. First and foremost, you have the dealers. You also have floor staff, tournament directors, masseuses, poker reporters, technicians, camera operators, producers, people that man the information desk when you enter, and plenty more.
In PokerNews’ Behind the Scenes series, we want to take a look at some of these people involved in the poker world that are, well, more “behind the scenes.”
First up is Kate Badurek, a member of the floor staff on the European Poker Tour. Anyone who has played an EPT main event or high roller over the last two years will certainly recognize her. The 30-year-old from Poland has been working on the tour for eight years, but her first contact with poker came more than 11 years ago.
First Contact
Hardly anyone envisioned working in poker when they were young. Badurek was no exception. An actress was what she wanted to become, and that was basically it. She had no big interests outside of acting, no big life goals. An actress is what she wanted to be.
Right after high school she handed in her application for an acting academy but was sadly turned down. Her parents insisted she would continue to study, so she had to come up with something new now that a career in acting had fallen through. With some knowledge of Russian already in hand thanks to classes in high school, she decided to go study Russian philology at the University of her hometown Olsztyn, Poland. “Mostly, to be honest, to please my parents.”
With her first year of studying at her University almost behind her, Badurek visited a party with friends where the group spun ideas for the approaching summer. They all intended on going to Dublin for the summer, which was the cool thing to do for students from Poland at the time. Badurek joined them. All on impulse really; “It was so random; I had never been to Ireland, I had never really traveled a whole lot to begin with really.”
This was not just a holiday, they intended on getting themselves summer jobs there as the minimum wage in Dublin was already a lot more than what they would be able to make in Poland. Though Badurek hardly knew any English, that didn’t hold her back. She went to Dublin and left her resume in hotels, bars, restaurants, and by coincidence at the Merrion Casino Club, a small poker club in one of those old beautiful buildings on Merrion Square – though Badurek didn’t know that at the time; “I didn’t even realize it was a poker club, I thought it was like a bar or something.
She got a call back soon after, and despite barely understanding what they were saying, she was able to understand that they wanted to meet for an interview. She was hired as a waitress on the spot, something that would turn out to be a life-changing experience.
“It was obviously all very new to me. I had no idea about waiting, let alone poker, and I could hardly understand what people were trying to order. It was a mess really.” But soon enough she picked up on basic English and got really interested in poker and good at being a waitress.
The EPT Talent Scouts Minimum wage was already decent for Badurek, but it was the tips from patrons that really prompted Badurek to stay longer in Dublin. Soon she moved to the Sporting Emporium, a far larger casino in Dublin, where she was hired before the casino had even opened. It was there where Badurek applied to become a poker dealer, and she got the job.
It all may sound like a calculated move, but it really wasn’t; “It was super random, like most of the things in my life. I didn’t make a big plan before.”
It turned out she was pretty good at dealing. In fact, it was the first time in her life someone told her she was good at something. “That felt great as a 19-year old, and I decided to take an extended break from University and I stayed in Ireland for two years as a poker dealer.”
While she enjoyed her work as a dealer and loved her time in Dublin, poker wasn’t her main interest. She wasn’t really into poker yet, it was just a job at the time. Poker hadn’t “consumed” her yet, and the poker world outside her local poker room was unknown territory. When the European Poker Tour came to Dublin in 2006, she had no idea what it was all about.
One night, as the EPT was in town, a group of players came into the Emporium and complimented Badurek on her skills as a dealer. They turned out to be members of the …
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