Women in Poker

Ask any woman who plays poker about her first time playing a live game. Ask her what she was feeling the very first time she stepped toward the poker room in a live casino. Ask her what was going through her head at the very sound of “Shuffle up and deal.” In all likelihood the hair on the back of her neck was standing up on end and she felt like she was going to vomit. I know that sounds silly but entering a poker room as a woman is not the easiest thing to do. In online poker rooms women make up about half the players. But in a live poker room it is more like 6-10%. So for every 100 people only 10 might be women. And for some poker rooms that number is generous.

Since the beginning of time poker has been considered a man’s game. It was played in smoke filled back rooms of the elite and in dusty cellars of underground card rooms. Not many women dared to make even the slightest attempt at entering the room unless they were scantily dressed and prepared to serve drinks. It was a gentlemen’s game and has remained that way for centuries. Even in the 1980’s women at the tables were frowned upon and not taken very seriously. Not until Barbara Enright showed them otherwise when she became the only woman to make a World Series of Poker Championship final table. Even twenty years later women are still not taken as seriously as we should be. But we are working on it.

The reasons? My feeling is that poker itself requires skill, money management, aggression and mathematical thinking. Women were not believed to have those skills. If you look back in history the 1980’s were years of movement for women. We began fighting for equal wages for equal work. We started stepping up to jobs that were always considered “manly” occupations. Women were recognized as police officers, firefighters and more than ever in sports. In many ways poker imitates life and visa versa. The move of women to poker began about that same time and has grown beyond what anyone ever gave much thought to. Just as Sandra Day O’Conner became the first woman to sit on the Supreme Court, Oprah Winfrey began a “serious” talk show that went beyond the glitz and glamour of star struck women as hosts women were coming out of the closet and into the poker rooms. One woman professional player told me that she used to tell people that she was a song writer. Poker was not considered a very honorable career. Unless, of course, you were a man.

Things are changing rapidly. Women are becoming braver and walking into the live casinos, this time walking past the slot machines and into the poker room. We are taking our skills, our money management, aggression and our sense of people to the tables. When we finally get up the courage to sit with the men, it is not long before everyone knows that when it comes to games of the mind and skill the men of poker have met their match. As in poker, women can and should step up to what they do best. Whether it be poker, art, music, business. Any career or sport that you can think of was originally a “man’s” world. That is changing. We can compete and we can prevail.