Ante Up, Ladies

By Francine Russo

Dark, smoke-filled rooms and tough guys slouching around a table, playing for keeps--that's our image of poker from old movies. But in the past few years, as poker mania has taken hold of the nation--fueled by televised tournaments, celebrity players and a proliferation of online poker sites--the game's macho image has undergone a makeover. At card tables both real and virtual across the country, women who didn't know a flush from a full house a year ago are pushing in chips and slapping down cards faster than you can say Texas Hold 'Em. Like many men, female players are often drawn in by moneymaking dreams (as in Chris Moneymaker, the unknown online player who inspired many a poker habit by capturing the $2.5 million World Series of Poker prize in 2003). But for women, there's the added appeal of having a great time while smashing through a gender barrier. "When you beat guys, it's a rush," says Gloria Tsang, 32, a Los Angeles nurse who took up poker three years ago. "I can play with these boys. I can hang with them."

Firm statistics on who's playing poker are hard to find, but virtually all the online sites report a big jump in female players. At EmpirePoker.com women have gone from 3% of players three years ago to 20% today. InterPoker.com reports that 10% of players a year ago were women. Today that number is at least 25%. "Women are the fastest-growing demographic of new players," says Maryann Morrison, publisher of the fledgling Woman Poker Player magazine and founder of the Women's Poker Club, a women-only site. Morrison estimates that about 35% of online players are now female, in part because of the rapid rise of all-female sites. Testifying to that hot new market are a slew of guidebooks by women for women. Among them: Annie Duke's How I Raised, Folded, Bluffed, Flirted, Cursed, and Won Millions; Cat Hulbert's Outplaying the Boys; and Toby Leah Bochan's The Badass Girl's Guide to Poker--all published this year.

Eileen Yee, 33, is typical of the newly minted female player. An accountant from Ferndale, Mich., she was riveted to ESPN last year during the World Series of Poker. "What grabbed me," she says, "was the excitement and drama." Afterward, she continued to watch televised poker for hours at a time, bought a book on strategy and refined her game online and at live tables. Residing in a state where gaming outside a casino is illegal, she finds it hard as a woman to pick up live games as often as she would like. At her computer, she can ante up anytime and enjoys playing without the locker-room humor she has endured when eye to eye with opponents.

It's a preference shared by many women. A 2005 survey commissioned by the World Poker Exchange found that women are six times as likely as men to prefer wagering in cyberspace--away from the testosterone-fueled aggressiveness often aimed at women in casinos. Also, since so many women are newcomers, they find online teaching tools and free or low-stakes games appealing. At Bodog.com for example, new players automatically get a hefty $1,000 in play money and 50 poker points toward tournaments. "Online, you can get experience for a dollar," says World Series of Poker champion Duke. "When I started, I had to risk $100 a game."

Cyberspace play offers other advantages, which can quickly turn beginners into practiced players. Online games are fast, and you can play far more hands in a month than would be possible in person. Also, without faces and bodies to read for tells--psychological clues to what's in an opponent's hand--players can concentrate on percentages and betting. They can take notes on how others bet and when they bluff. A click on most sites lets players set up opponent profiles. Players can also search all their own previous hands, comparing stats, for example, on the percentages of hands folded compared with hands won. Onscreen boxes list how many chips each player has, and dialogue boxes let players chat.

In cyberspace, women can disguise their gender. At InterPoker.com six months ago, says site spokesman Peter Marcus, many women took on male identities, fearing they would be easy targets. Having gained confidence, many are now requesting changes to female user names. "Poker is the great equalizer," asserts Duke. "Whether you are 70 or 20, man or woman, there is no physical limitation." Still, the champ believes that to succeed at high-level poker, most women must overcome cultural conditioning against being aggressive.

Although no generalizations based on gender can be universal, insiders say that women tend to play less aggressively than men but that women have certain advantages. "Poker requires patience, discipline and good intuition," says Ron Burke, president of EmpirePoker.com "which women are strong in." His company's research shows that female players tend to be more cautious--tighter, in poker parlance--more patient and more disciplined. Women do bluff but generally with more attention to the odds. Women make more online notes about opponents' playing styles, and over time they show more improvement than men.

Women are often seen as more emotional than men, but in poker the reverse seems to be true. Because guys tend to invest their egos in winning--especially in beating a girl--they often shove their chips into the pot even if their cards don't warrant the bet. Moreover, women seem to be more familiar with the male mind than the other way around. "From the time we're teens, we wonder, 'Will he call? What's he thinking?'" observes poker pro Hulbert. "Women have their intuition more honed." For savvy women, especially in live play, it's easy to pick up on male opponents' attitudes--biased, patronizing, flirtatious or fatherly--and exploit them, she says.

Las Vegas entrepreneur Valerie Bent, 36, for example, capitalizes on the male belief that women don't bluff to bluff big time. Bent partly financed the founding of her new clothing company, Big Feet Pajama, with her winnings at the casino tables. "I'd go with my husband on Friday and Saturday nights, dressed to the nines in my stilettos," she relates. "The guys would look at me like dead money--sure to lose. They flirt with you to keep you at the table--until you start winning. Then they get very quiet."

Female pros maintain that playing your femininity against male opponents is just good strategy. Whether you taunt a man into betting a bad hand too aggressively or take advantage of his wish to be fatherly and help you out, you're playing within the rules. Poker is in part about psychology, fooling your opponents into making bad decisions.

New players need to remember, though, that poker, like any other form of gambling, can be addictive. Amateurs, Hulbert warns, must be especially wary online. "Without the feel of the chips in your hands," she says, "money becomes an abstract concept, and it's easy to lose more than you can afford."

Jo Ransom, 56, learned that the hard way. A disabled former secretary from Bonham, Texas, she took up online poker with glee about a year ago. Lonely at home and hooked on the thrill of competing, she began playing $20 and $30 tables and losing too much. Then an online friend at the Women's Poker Club gave her some sisterly advice, which she took to heart. "Now I deposit only so much a month," she says, "and if I lose it, I just play free games until the next month." Borrowing to play is a sure sign of trouble, say addiction experts, but money issues aren't the only indicator. Ask yourself whether your playing interferes with your life--your work, your relationships.

But for women players who maintain realistic limits, poker can be invigorating socially and even professionally. Jennifer Nichols, 25, a San Francisco public relations executive, hosts a Texas Hold 'Em party for her girlfriends every Monday night. The players, ages 21 to 28, dress sloppy, eschew makeup and dish over Desperate Housewives. "Everyone's so busy," she says, "but at the games my girlfriends and I really get to talk. And because it's considered a male game, other women think it's cool that we do it."

Playing with the boys offers its own distinct advantages. Linda Norman, 33, president of a Web-design company in Dallas, recently began attending networking poker events for executives, typically male. "It's a social setting where they find out you're competitive and intelligent," she says. "They see you as someone they can do business with." Other card-playing businesswomen say poker can help sharpen business skills. It teaches how to think strategically and size up the competition and the risk- reward ratio of each situation swiftly and objectively.

Los Angeles documentary-film producer Babette Pepaj, 32, applies poker perspective to her life every day. "Many times in business," she notes, "we keep trying to fix something that isn't working simply because we've spent a lot of time and energy on the project. Admitting defeat is hard, but having the restraint to fold ultimately protects you and keeps you in the game--and this is a skill you don't necessarily learn in business school."

Can a card game really teach such profound life lessons? Poker-playing women say it's so, that knowing when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em is more than just a hokey country-music sentiment--and it ain't just for cowboys.