Being a woman at the poker table

Linda Johnson wrote an article for CardPlayer on whether being a woman at the poker table is an advantage or disadvantage (read it here Linda’s article)

To add to my comments in her article, here are a few more thoughts. I think being a woman at a poker table can be both an advantage and a disadvantage, depending on the situation.

Advantages
• If you can pick up on how you’re being perceived and adjust your play (within your comfort zone) to profit from that.
• Women (in general) do not have that big of an ego we need to feed. Intuition tells us when we’re losing and letting go of good cards in bad situations are relatively easy compare to how hard it is for our male counterparts to do.
• Emotionally we are stronger and (as in life) women wouldn’t let themselves go on tilt, I think being built to bear and raise children made us emotionally strong, and little things like Aces cracked by the donkey in seat 1 does not nearly have the same impact than it has on Billy BaddAss next to me.
• This is just a personal thought, don’t really have anything to back it up, but I think we can stay focused for longer amounts of time than men, in long tournaments, we are less likely to make mistakes by the end of the tournament.
• Instinct, intuition, etc – that’s just common sense that we’re much better at that than men. We pick up on tells even when we don’t know that we do. Environmental factors put us on alert without us realizing it, and really – 90% of women who gets cheated on by husbands/boyfriends, pick up on that before they get the facts – it’s no different at the poker table. We just know. Like my mom, she knew everything
• Most men are easily distracted by boobs. Some even just by mentioning boobs.

Disadvantages
• In general (and I want to stress this, IN GENERAL), women will always be perceived by men as the weaker sex. Our legacy is to be submissive to our man, and doesn’t matter how far we come in changing that belief, or how much progress is made, there still are women out there portraying just that and I do believe, in some sense men still feel superior to most women. And that cause them to be more aggressive towards us and make plays that they would not make against a male opponent.

To think… or not to think

When you start to play poker, it’s all about the cards.  YOUR cards and the cards on the board.  Other players in the hand ceased to exist once you hit top pair – a straight or a flush lights up your face like Vegas Boulevard on New Year’s Eve and when you push all in, even Gus Hanson knows to fold.

Then one day – after your top pair gets beat time after time – you start wondering “how did I not see that coming?” , you have a light bulb moment and realized that people don’t always call bets for no reason.  They don’t always have the same pair with a worse kicker.  Now you start paying attention to the cards your opponents might have.  

Probably at this time you also are getting curious and start reading up on how to play against these people who call with draws.  You learn from various sources about the different levels of thinking in poker.  Oh no, now I have to think about not only what my opponent is holding, but also what he thinks I am holding?

Putting that into practice is a different animal.  So you decide to give it a try.  Two limpers in the pot, you raise from the button with two random cards.  Both limpers call and the flop comes K-8-3 rainbow.  OK, so you want them to think you have AK, so you bet a reasonable amount after they both checked.  But the EP guy has read the book too, so now he wants you to think he has a set of 3’s or 8’s, so he called with the intention of leading out on the turn.  Other limper just calls too.

Turn is a 2, first guy bets, and now you decide you want them to think you have a set of 8’s and you raised.  First guy now is thinking that you thought he had a K and that you think he thought you had a medium pair and that you thought he thought you had AK.  At this point, all this thinking is taking it’s toll and neither of you has a clue of what you’re really holding.

Lots of raising and re-raising going on and at showdown you have two people with crappy cards shouting at each other ‘how can you call with that, I was representing AK” followed by “I put you on AK and I was representing a set, you’re the donk!”, while the second limper (beginner player still on Level 1 thinking) who totally missed all the thinking that were going on, silently stacks the chips that he/she just won wit K2o.

 

I think it’s important that we stop overthinking every hand and sometimes just play them.  Wait for the right opportunity against the right opponent to switch to the next level of thinking.  Don’t get caught up and carried away.

 

Slow times

I’m not sure how this happened, but I played only 4 live tournaments May!  And to make it even worse, I didn’t cash in any of those.  Actually for April and May I have cashed only once, thank goodness that was for a decent amount, otherwise I would have felt even worse!

 

 I think I got used to the comfort on online playing and it’s just so much easier – you don’t have to get up and get dressed and drive the 10 minutes to the casino.  Bah, that’s just no excuse, I should be happy I live here in the poker Mecca of the world, and should get my ass out to the casino’s and play!  Especially now, with the WSOP and all the other series starting!

 I’ve also started to run again, well, if you can call it running, probably look more like a brisk walk to others, but I’m on a mission to prepare to run the half-marathon in Vegas in December with one of my fellow chix-sters.  But I’m still at a point where the exercise takes it toll and when I get home at night, the last thing I want to do, is get out and move again.  That’s when online poker is such a blessing J

 Online I’ve been doing OK, quite well some times and not so well other times, but at least I think I’m winning more than losing at this point, which is great, of course.  I play a lot of other games, like PL 5-card Draw, Stud, Omaha, 2-7, etc.  I’m doing pretty well in the 5-card draw games, but I can honestly say I suck at 2-7, I don’t think I’ve cashed ONCE in any of them.  Staying away from them now!

 OK, so it’s almost June, the WSOP is in town, let’s go play some poker!!!!

 

Some days are diamonds, some days are stone

Slow month so far, I’ve played in only 3 live tournaments so far, and haven’t cashed in any. Ugh, I love to cash! But, I don’t feel too bad, I’m pretty happy with the way I played and don’t feel I’ve lost due to a stupid move I made. Most of the time I’ve managed to get my money in ahead and just got unlucky. Looking back, knowing what the cards were (mine, my opponents and the flop), I wouldn’t have played it any other way, and I guess that’s the important part.

Online, however, was another story this week. I play very low stakes on Pokerstars, nothing higher than a $5 buy-in. Since Sunday I’ve played about 8 (I think) of the $4.40 180 person SnG’s on Stars, and I’ve managed to make the final table on 4 of them! I got two 4th places, a 5th and a 6th! The only bad thing is that they normally last until way past my bedtime. Since I start working at 7pm in the morning, you can imagine that I wasn’t exactly a ray of sunshine at the office this week. Oh yeah and don’t forget my new commitment to running, my initial visits to the gym were quite tiresome! Thank goodness it’s Friday today!

Apart from the $4 tourneys, I’ve cashed in some others – even won a Stud Draw game, hehe – and manage to get my online bankroll up from $87 to just under $400 now. Finally according to Sharkscope – I’m not in the red anymore and haven’t been on ‘SuperTilt’ for a while now!!

Since I stopped trying so hard, I’m doing much better – I’m probably not a poster child for theoretical poker, but hey, whatever works. And this works for me. I know I still have a lot to learn, but show me a poker player who doesn’t….

Ouch and ouch again!

I’ve been debating back and forth on whether I want to go play the WSOP Ladies Circuit Event at Caesars on Monday. The buy-in was $340, a little higher than what I’m normally playing, so that’s a big consideration for me. But since I’ve stopped trying to ‘fix’ my game, I’m much more comfortable playing the way I’m used to, and felt good and I really wanted to go. I guess the thought of being able to take a day off work to go play, was the deciding factor, and I convinced myself to go play. I think I was going to go regardless; it just took a while for me to come up with enough reasons to justify the buy-in.

So the tournament started with 160 players – which was way more than I expected, given the fact that it’s on a Monday. Apparently I’m the only one with a job!!!

My first table was very passive – I got a couple of good hands there, QQ flopped a set against AA, unfortunately the 3 spades on the board slowed down the betting significantly, but I still managed to get some chips. Then I got a straight flush with my 2s9s, when the board was KsQsJs, turn a blank, the river brought the 10s, not a very exciting straight flush given that the As was gonna make a royal – luckily no one else had the As and I won that one too.

Got moved – players were noticeably tight and there were not many showdowns. A pre-flop raise followed by a continuation bet in general won the pot. For a while, at least.
JJ Liu got seated on my right, she was short-stacked however, and after only a couple of hands she pushed with 99’s into a raiser, got called by a big Ace and got knocked out when the Ace hit.

I doubled up when Mel (pokerchix AskMelanie) raised UTG, I reraised with AK to isolate, but of course she knew it and pushed all in. I figured she has JJ or QQ, I thought with AA or KK she would just smooth-call the raise and now I was facing a dilemma. I have to hit my A or K and then even then I might not be good – on the other hand, I had only 2500 chips left if I fold and I convinced myself it was worth the gamble. I called, she had QQ, I hit a K and doubled up. Phew!!

Then the fun began. A short, seemingly confused Asian lady was seating next to me, to my right. Maybe she was just not fluent in English, but when she talked, she confused me more than when she played. She made some ridiculous calls and bets, and I couldn’t figure out if she was clueless or hyper-smart. A little while later it all became clear though. She min-raised in early position, I called with AK. Flop came K-J-x, she bet, I raised, she pushed all in. Based on her previous play, I was pretty convinced I had her beat and I called. She turned over QJ – YES!
The turn is another Jack – NO!!!!! That’s just not fair. Now I am short stack again!!!

Couple hands later Mel pushed all in, I called with all but 500 of my chips with 99. Mel had K3, and the flop is KK-x, turn is a 3 just to rub it in and I’m left with one 500 chip! I’m UTG, the blinds are 200/400 with 25 ante, I put my last 475 in with K7 and got two callers. On the turn, the one caller bet, other lady groaned and folded. Better had KQ, but I hit my 7 on the river and tripled up. Girl who folded, was disgusted and said she folded 88, figuring the better had her beat since she bet.
I went all in next two hands and doubled up and won some blinds and antes and I was up to around 4K again. Still in bad shape, but at least I had something to work with now.

OK, so at this point we have 50 people left out of the 160, payout is 18 places, so with a lot of patience I and a lot of luck I might just get lucky. They move me to a new table, I got seated in seat 9, next to a really great lady who shared her chocolate with me when I complained I was hungry (just for the record, I thought she was great before she shared her stuff with me!).

Now there were some dynamics at this table, apparently the two big stacks were gunning each other. Chips were flying back and forth between them, the younger Asian girl seemed tilting like crazy, and the older grey-haired woman just happily calling and raising, adding fuel to the fire. I’ve seen an all in push with an OESD, getting called by a gutshot straight draw – only to win a HUGE pot with a pair of 4’s. The trouble was, I was dead smack in the middle of the two ends of this battle.

I picked up AJ and pushed – collecting antes and blinds. Very next hand I have AJ again, this time I raised. Asian girl looked antsy after folding previous hand and she and the BB called. Flop came J high with two hearts, I pushed. The Asian girl insta-called with 5h3h – and my stomach turned. Turn is a black card, river is an Ace, but the Ace of hearts and I’m heading out in 44th place or so. I wanted to throw up a little. I don’t mind the calls from players when they’re behind, I really don’t – it just hurts when they get lucky – and in this tournament the two times that they got lucky, took me out of the tournament.

I headed over to the V to play a little Omaha H/L, made a little profit and decided to go play the 7pm at PH. Long story short, I got busted with Q-10 against 10-2 when he caught a 2 for second pair. Oh well.

Felt a little better when I took 4th out of 180 on Pokerstars last night in a $4 tournament, not a big win, but a win nevertheless, and sometimes I think the fields of the micro stakes tournaments are harder to beat!!!! Really really takes some patience to make it deep in those.

Tonight I think I’ll take a break and play some WoW. Maybe poker will miss me……