PokerStars pros have been set some interesting challenges over the years.

Arlie Shaban had to complete the ‘12 labors of Arlie’ to win a Platinum Pass.

Sebastian “peace&loove” Huber had to win Dare2Stream to get his red spade.

And Lex Veldhuis has had to dress up as Braveheart, a voodoo shaman and a knight in shining armour, for crying out loud.

Now it’s Georgina “GJ Reggie” James’ turn.

After discussing fitness goals on her Twitch stream, the PokerStars Team Pro received a message from a member of PokerStars staff that read:

“If you touch your toes, to Barcelona you go.”

The challenge is simple. If GJ can improve her flexibility enough to touch her toes within the next month, she’ll be off to EPT Barcelona to play in the Women’s Event.

So, how’s she going to complete the challenge?

Well, this week GJ has been documenting her training, plus she gives us a guided behind-the-scenes tour of her brand new stream room and shows us how she sets up her stream before going live.

Check it out.

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PokerStars Blog: Hey GJ! You mention in one of your videos that stretching more and improving your flexibility was a goal of yours before any challenge was set. Why was this?

GJ Reggie: When it comes to fitness goals I like making things that I can measure. I don’t particularly like weight loss goals because I think they can be misleading sometimes. I wanted something that felt simple and where I could quite easily get into a routine. Stretching doesn’t sound particularly difficult but I think it’s important, especially when you sit down a lot. Try to do something to alleviate that as you can become really stiff when you’re sitting in front of a computer all day. Going for runs and then stretching afterwards was always something I wanted to do.

How did the toe touching challenge come about?

The whole toe touch thing came about because I thought you can’t really measure flexibility that easily but that’s one way you can do it as I can physically measure how many cm above the floor my hands are. Yoga is something I’ve always tried to get into because every time I’ve done a yoga session I’ve felt really good afterwards but I’ve never got into a routine doing it, so that was something I wanted to work on.

There are also a lot of people in my Discord who are getting back into fitness so I thought I’d jump on board as well.

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How are you going about completing the challenge?

I Googled how long you have to stretch to improve flexibility because people stretch anyway to warm up and cool down when they exercise, but I thought there much be a way to do it to improve flexibility as opposed to just not trying to injure yourself when exercising. A lot of it’s the same, you just have to hold the stretch for longer and push it a bit further afterwards and then hold for a long period of time. Then I found a bunch of leg stretches. For toe touching, it’s mostly calves, hamstrings, back and hips.

I’ve only got a month which isn’t a long time in the grand scheme of things. I’m not even sure if it’s possible or whether I’m trying to do too much. We’ll see!

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You’ve been playing more live poker now that the tours are back. How have those live events been for you?

I’ve been to a few events this year. I went to Limerick in February/March time and then UKIPT London and then Malta. It’s been really good fun. I’m always quite nervy when playing because I don’t play much live. The first day of playing live I’m always a bit on edge because I don’t have enough experience. But after the first day, I’m usually OK. I’ve met lots of people, particularly in Malta. A lot of community members came to London. Meeting people is the best, getting to chat and hang out.

Do you find that people talk to you more because of the Team Pro patch?

I don’t get recognised that much because compared to other streamers I’m relatively small, but I have a small but tight-knit community. But people do see the PokerStars patch and ask questions. It’s a nice icebreaker actually.

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You show us your new stream room in the video above. What inspired the move?

This is the family home that I grew up in. My parents were living in Hong Kong because my dad was working over there, but they’re now back and here permanently now. I was in a much smaller study and this room was a conservatory, but when my parents got back they did a load of house refurbishment and they really wanted to change the conservatory into a usable room. In the heat, it was kind of unusable. But they refurbed it and asked me if I could move into this room as they thought it would be a better space for me to work. They’ve let me make it my own and it’s way bigger than where I was before. The study I had before has now returned to my dad because that’s where he used to work.

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What’s coming up for you?

I’m off to Amsterdam for Twitch Con on Thursday. It’s the first one they’ve had post-pandemic. There are lots of panels going on and stalls with sponsors and people selling streamer gear. There are lots of people from the community going so it will be a nice meet-up for sure, especially as there are a few Dutch people in my community who I’ve known for a long time–around three and a half years–but we’ve never met, so I’ll get to see them.

And I hear it’s your birthday on Friday. Happy birthday for then! Any plans?

Yeah, and weirdly there are seven of us in my community who share a birthday and three of us are going to be in Amsterdam. We’ll all do something together!

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