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I don’t think I’ve discussed that aspect of poker much in the past, though I’m sure that nobody is surprised to hear that it is a very large part of the poker culture. Of the poker professionals out there, very few are female, and those who are generally frame themselves as the sex-kitten-who-just-happens-to-play-poker–it’s a great hook and makes them a lot of dough via sponsors–generally what I think of as the Danica Patrick marketing strategy. (Jennifer Harman is one exception to that, but I honestly can’t think of any others right now.)

I am not infrequently the only woman at my table when I play poker, and even when I’m not, there’s rarely more than one other (there are usually eight to ten people at a table total). I’ve gotten spoiled, though–I’ve mostly been playing with the same pool of folks now for a couple of years, so they all know me–they know that how I play has absolutely nothing to do with any gender dynamics they might want to introduce to the situation, let’s say. However, Saturday night, I wound up making it all the way to the final table in the tourney I was in–in fact, made it to the point where there was only one other player left and me competing for the win.

I didn’t (and still don’t) know the guy’s name–he wasn’t someone I’d ever played with before. We’d just spent about forty minutes together at the final table, but we hadn’t been in any hands together (it’s not unusual not to be in any hands with me for forty minutes–I am a folding machine). I do recall, though, when he looked up from his chips and realized that there was nobody else left at the table but him and me–he fixed his gaze on mine and got the biggest, brightest smile on his face. Then he pushed out a pile of chips–a big one, about a third of his stack. “I’m betting this,” he said, grinning at me.

“Can’t,” I said. The tournament director had come over to shuffle and deal for us and was busy with the cards. “You can’t straddle* in this league.”

He ignored me. “Hey, W,” I said to the director. “No straddling, right?”

“Nope,” said the director, and flicked a glance over at my competitor. “Put ‘em back.”

Still grinning, he lazily pulled his chips back to his main pile, one and two at a time. “But that’s what I’m gonna bet,” he said.

Oh sigh. I ignored him til the cards were dealt; without so much as a glance down at his own, he tossed out a similar pile of chips–if he’d put the smirk away while I hadn’t been looking, it was back full force now, coupled with a pointed stare deep into my eyes.

I peeked under my cards. Queen-ten suited–not a monster, by any means–but–”Oh,” I said, and looked up at him, and finally grinned back at him with the biggest wattage I could muster. “Well. I’m all in.” I scooped up my entire chip stack and placed it carefully in front of my cards.

His grin vanished abruptly, just like it’d been slapped off his face (which it pretty much had). “Oh really,” he said.

“Really,” I said. I was feeling genuinely cheerful now. Slowly, he looked under his cards, then back up at me–no intently smirking stare now, one couldn’t help but notice.

“Really,” he said.

“Yep,” I said. I blinked innocently at him. “You might wanna look at your cards first, before you bet, next time…”

The girl sitting next to him watching, who hadn’t said a word all evening, suddenly grinned. “I like her,” she said.

Now, what just happened..?

Well, if you play poker, you know. It is a very common, and honestly a very successful, strategy, to identify the weak player (or weaker players, if you’re lucky and there’s more than one) at a table and bully him (or them). A weak player is a fearful player, who unless he has the absolute nuts** can usually be frightened out of a hand by a show of aggression. There is nothing wrong with doing this; it’s part of the game.

However, you should never confuse weak with tight. A tight player will fold to a raise if he doesn’t have pot odds–and sometimes other players will misunderstand this and mistakenly think that they have scared him out of the hand, rather than it being a reasoned mathematical decision. However, it usually doesn’t take long for them to realize their mistake–all it takes is trying to push him out with bad cards on a bluff, getting called and losing chips to teach them a valuable (if sometimes painful) lesson.

Another thing you should never do, that male players often regularly attempt on any new female player until they are thrashed out of the possession of this very bad idea, is assume that a player can be intimidated by them simply because she is a woman. And it was so, so painfully obvious that was the dynamic that even our casual female spectator got quite a kick out of watching him get caught out stark naked on it.

*”Straddle” means, technically, to bet double the big blind before the cards are dealt–it’s also used more generally just to mean betting at all before the cards are dealt, though.
**”Nuts” are the best possible hand at that point in the game.