It's a Man's World No Longer
Picture this: You’re at a final table. The cut-off raises your blind. You reraise and the cut-off goes all in. You call and flip over A-K. She shows you aces. Admit it. Did you picture a woman here?
Odds are, you didn’t – and why would you? This summer, a popular sports betting website put odds on a woman making the ’07 World Series of Poker Main Event final table at 3 to 1. Considering only one woman ended up in the top 50 at this year’s Main Event, a line like this looks like easy money against. Compared to the number of guys, there are so few women playing poker that picturing a woman at any final table requires either a stretch of the imagination or a lot of optimism.
Or does it? While the eventual champion had to outlast 550 people instead of about 6,000, the winner of the first-ever World Series of Poker
Success online is one thing, but a woman winning a major televised poker tournament outright is huge for the poker industry. I’ve been rooting for it for a long time. Perhaps I should have been careful what I wished for because, on her way to taking the WSOPE down, she sent me to the rail.
“What’s the big deal all of a sudden about female poker players?” you might ask. Women like Jen Harmon have been making boys of men for years. But here’s where the double standard comes in. There is a very widely held perception that female players are different. This perception results in weird and different practices. Even in the tight “buyers’ market” following the passage of the UIGEA, mediocre female players continue to sign lucrative endorsement deals while men of similar talents don’t even warrant discussion. At the same time, however, many extremely talented but less well-known women struggle to be recognized for possessing any talent at all.
We might not like to admit it, but poker’s full of stereotypes and there are definitely a few pervasive ones about female players:
“What’s a woman’s favorite suit?” the old joke asks.
“Is it hearts?” “No.”
“Is it diamonds?” “No.”
“It’s CLUBS, CLUBS, CLUBS!!!”
The stereotypical female poker player is a bludgeoner, making pot-sized bets and huge raises. While there are definitely a number of women who have made millions by pushing the men around, many of the most well-known female players are actually fairly tight. I don’t think you’ll fi nd anyone calling Jen Harmon or Kristy Gazes ultra-aggressive, but I’m sure that from time to time, they still cash in on their status as “bludgeoners.”
The other stereotype is that women are just not as good – that poker is somehow a man’s game. Obviously poker, in this country at least, has a history as a men-only activity. We even call the best hand “the nuts” I’d say the stereotype that women are just different still exists. Male players might deny this but why else do women-only events exist? You could argue that it’s to drum up interest, but it’s still a little weird. You don’t see men-only or Asian-only events.
Pardon my saying so, but some guys still act from what’s in their other pocket when it comes to playing against women. In an arena where showing mercy is considered a huge weakness, I watched a guy in this year’s ($10,000) WSOP Main Event think for five minutes before calling Dee Daniel’s pre-flop all-in when he had aces. He said later he had to calculate what having her at the table was worth to him. I’ve also seen people who seem to let women steal their blinds, whereas if I man raised their blind, they’d be more likely to defend.
This categorizing of women definitely adds another layer to the mind games that make poker so much fun. Some of my female friends tell me they try to “look as helpless as possible” at the table and others say they know they’ll be viewed as bludgeoners so they just wait for the nuts and “bludgeon” away. Ultimately, being stereotyped in poker only helps you. It’s an immediate table image that you don’t have to earn. The less a player respects you, the more likely they are to hand you chips. With the anonymity of online games and with the successes of a new generation of women building on that of their poker godmothers, 2008 could be a huge year. Some people are talking about a woman president. What about a female WSOP Champ?
Paul Wasicka is a professional poker player based in Las Vegas, NV. For more about Paul, check www.kwickfish.com
