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Entry #39: Women
"Men enjoy being thought of as hunters, but are generally too lazy to hunt. Women, on the other hand, love to hunt, but would rather nobody knew it." (Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966)
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Perhaps one of the most significant developments in the poker world is the rapid expansion in terms of the number of women playing online poker. Being able to stay in the comfort of your own environment is a key attraction to online play and, given that poker should know no gender barrier, the online explosion has gone some way in redressing the balance.
For those male players out there who still believe poker isn't a game for 'girls' it really is time to wake up and smell the rose-scented cyber cards. If you're playing on a 10-player table, for example, chances are a couple of your opponents are women... under-estimate them at your peril.
"I have an idea that the phrase "weaker sex" was coined by some woman to disarm some man she was preparing to overwhelm." (Ogden Nash).
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Precisely. Too many men continue to make the mistake of expecting women to be passive, overly tight players - an approach that is wrong on several levels. Happy to subscribe to the weaker sex theory, these players apply a ready-made read as soon as they learn that there is a woman in their midst, and this strategy of course makes them predictable. They assume that a bet/raise from a woman implies nothing less than a strong hand because they consider anything even remotely subtle to be a 'technique' of which only men are capable. Consequently we see these fools not only folding marginal hands in the face of a raise or 'obvious' aggression from a woman, but even letting superior hands go (this is for two reasons - our expert doesn't want to be seen being outplayed by a woman, and of course he's afraid of losing a hand to a woman anyway). The chief issue here is that the implications of such play are relevant to all of us, so when you see a player's style radically alter because he has singled out a woman at the table as his prey, or his ego has manifested itself in some other - often conspicuous - fashion, then it pays to keep a close eye on his betting patterns as there will doubtless be opportunities for exploitation. This, like much advice, should go without saying, but we know well that such fundamental points are exactly those with which we must constantly reacquaint ourselves.
"Women are never stronger than when they arm themselves with their weakness." (Marie de Vichy-Chamrond, Marquise du Deffand, Letters to Voltaire)
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As I walk around the supermarket, for example, I tend to be fairly competent in working out who is a woman and who is a man (that's a no-brainer - men are the ones being told by women to put stuff back on the shelves). But online it can be difficult to spot who's who, even after engaging in conversation in the chat box. Some women prefer to blend in simply get on with the game, while others are more than happy to advertise their gender, especially as so many gullible players fit the chauvinist mould above. And this is why a growing band of crafty male players have become cyber poker-cross-dressers, giving themselves a screen-name that has the obvious - often too obvious - feminine touch and then waiting for their victims to take advantage of them, if you will. Alas such tactics render the chauvinist's self-superior game-plan laughably pointless, yet we still see such examples happening all day long, with no lessons apparently being taken on board.
My advice (this goes for women, too, of course) is that when playing against both women and 'women' we should simply continue with a business as usual policy - second guessing someone's play based solely on their (supposed) gender is foolhardy at best.
Good luck at the tables!
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