Champion of Poker

I have a problem playing against women, especially attractive women. I have been raised to respect women and not to take advantage of them at the poker table. When I play with women, I tend not to be as aggressive as I would be against men. Attractive women make it worse. I don’t know whether it is their good looks or my hormones but I spend more time trying to chat them up than play with them. Any suggestions?

Peter

Peter,

I know of the ailment of which you speak. Many men have that problem with playing female players. I was fortunate enough to never really develop it. Part of the reason that I never developed it was due to the caliber of competition I played against in my early poker career, but we will go into that later.

As hard as this sounds, you really need to learn how to stop looking at female poker players as women. I know you just gave me a weird look, but let me explain. When we are at the poker tables, the main thing that we are using are our minds. Men when they sit down to the poker table with women start to use their emotions or hormones more than their mind. One must remember that in most cases, a woman at the table is there to take your money just the same as the men are.

One must also be aware that some women are capable of using their feminine whiles to try and confuse or distract you. You need to learn how to ignore this. A woman at the poker table is not interested in going to bed with you. The ones that you find attractive enough to sleep with are likely already with someone else, and they are probably at another table in the poker room, or even in the seat next to you. A woman’s sexuality is used as a weapon and a man’s inability to control his emotions or hormones is also a weapon that women can use.

Personally, when I started playing live poker, the first three female opponents shaped in my head what I should be looking for when I play women. The first player was the wife of a somewhat well known poker player. She was a little older than most of us and most were just being nice to her etc. Quickly I noticed that she was winning a few hands so I started observing her play. I didn’t know who she was married to, but I discovered later on when I played a game with him. She didn’t look like much at the table, but was indeed a very strong player.

The same happened with the next female player I played against. I thought I was hot stuff in Stud 8 or Better and this game, I was getting my butt handed to me. I let my ego get in the way and this lady player just kept chopping me up with solid play. After a while, I started playing her like I would the rest of the table and I stopped the bleeding.

The third female player that I ever played against is probably the one that instilled in my head about how to play women. I was in an event at the Bike in Los Angeles and Hall of Fame player Barbara Enright was to my right. We both had arrived early and I knew who she was, so I started talking to her about poker and various topics. I then proceeded to watch her play during the tournament and watched how she used a combination of good play, charm, and playing on the stereotypes that men have about women to win pots. After this event, I never looked at women at the table as women. I looked at them as players only.

You would be better suited to start looking at women as only players and not women. It may be tough, but it will put you in the right frame of mind to beat them.