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.