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Are Women Luckier Poker Players than Men?
My wife, Deirdre, claims to be luckier than most people. She believes in the luck of the Irish, and because she was born way over in Ireland's west, in Sligo, to be precise - a literal stone's throw from the ancestral home of William Butler Yeats - she claims to have more luck than the average second or third generation American of Irish descent. We've talked about this, and while she doesn't really believe that luck winnows away with each succeeding generation born away from the Shamrock shore, she still believes herself luckier than most, and she's fond of telling me that if she took poker as seriously as I do, that she'd be much luckier at the game than I am.I agree with her, but not because of the luck of the Irish or anything as fanciful as that. It's because I try to take as much luck out of of poker's equation as I can. And even if I am not able to relegate luck to the back row, where it rightly belongs, I will never be perceived to be as lucky as she is, for a variety of reasons.
Some of these reasons relate directly to of poker, and others don't, except in the most peripheral of manners. For example, Deirdre always sees the glass as half full rather than half empty. She's so positive that even a glass on the verge of being drained dry is, in her estimation, about to refill itself momentarily. Someone that positive is always going to be perceived as lucky because she's unconsciously always finding ways to refill those nearly emptied glasses.
I'm different. I see a glass as half empty and half full simultaneously, and I don't know which direction it's headed until I see it either filling or draining, or there's some compelling evidence, like a guy running my way with a pitcher full of iced tea looking to refill it.
And when it comes to of poker, I always look to take luck out of the equation. I don't want to draw out on you. Really, I don't. If I draw out on you that means I went into the fray with the weaker hand, and if that's the case I'm either very short stacked in a tournament and had no other option or I've made a very bad read and entered this confrontation thinking I had the best of it, only to find out that I am staring up a rather large and formidable hill.
And I'm a guy too. Guys are not perceived as inordinately "lucky." Oh, sure, there's beginner's luck. Beginners are often perceived as lucky because they really don't understand the game and catch miraculous cards just when they need to and win big pots when they are huge underdogs.
Saying that someone has "beginner's luck" is tantamount to saying that he really doesn't understand the game and win despite an appalling lack of skill, knowledge, and judgment. Women are often perceived as lucky too, except it's more pernicious because even experienced woman poker players are often viewed as more lucky than good.
Jennifer Tilly is now an experienced poker player. When she won her bracelet at the World Series of Poker, the overriding theme of much of the commentary was that she got very lucky on the way to her title. But when you get down to cases, can you cite any player - man or woman - who's won a World Series of Poker bracelet who did not get lucky on one hand or another? And even if you can't cite a hand where they entered a confrontation with the worst of it and wound up on top, the absence of bad luck is just as critical to winning a tournament as something that happens against all odds and enables you to win the pot. Even Doyle Brunson can be said to have gotten lucky when he won the World Series of Poker championship when he held a T-2 in his hand and flopped the perfect hand.
And Doyle is not thought of as a "lucky" player. Nope. He's regarded as an incredibly skillful practitioner of poker's craft. And even if you forget all about his winning while holding a ten and a deuce in his hand, there are all those other times no one recalls because they just aren't noteworthy. I'm talking about all those unremarkable hands where Doyle had the best of it and avoided bad luck because his opponent did not draw out on him when all the money was in the center of the table. Although the results are determined by the random turn of a card, in the vast majority of cases things play to form, and are seldom remembered because of it.
If Jennifer Tilly were to win three or four more tournaments in short order, I'd venture to say that she'd be regarded as lucky, even though she doesn't figure to be any luckier, or unluckier, than Doyle Brunson.
It's perception. It's packaging. It's all in how we filter things as we take them in. If you go back to Marshall McLuhan's precept that the medium is the message, then poker as practiced though the medium of a female player will usually be viewed as luckier than the same of poker plays made by a guy.
For female players, there's opportunity in all of this. If part of you wants to rail about the rampant sexism inherent in the way many men at the poker table view their female opponents, go ahead and do so. But do it silently, or do it away from the of poker table. While you're in the game, you can use your opponent's perception that you are a lucky player solely because you're a woman as a club to beat him into the ground.
When your opponent firmly believes you are luckier than he is, and you come out betting - or in an even better scenario, he's a player you've never seen before and you feign innocence by asking the poker newbie's best bluffing question: "How much can I bet?" before committing all your chips to the pot - he's probably going to release his hand and he won't even mind doing it. When you can accomplish that, you've gotten deep inside his head, and as long as you've achieved that degree of intimacy, you might as well empty his billfold too. He'll be overjoyed it was you and no one else - after all, it's only shameful admitting you've been outplayed; there's no dishonor in being outlucked. When you can empty a player's wallet and leave them wanting more, you've come full circle and completely closed the loop. He now believes you are luckier than he is, therefore he suffers no blow to his ego in losing his money to you.
You know you're no luckier than he is, and so do I. We both know the truth: you're the better player. But he can't see the truth because of all the filters that prevent him for seeing clearly. Luck is built on perception, not reality, and unless you can see through it you're in for a rough ride. But when you can, you can accept it for what it is, just a shimmering rainbow somewhere off in the distance.
Even Deirdre Quinn, luck of the Irish notwithstanding, is no more fortunate than her husband, and maybe even less so. After all, if she has all those shamrocks and leprechauns to do her bidding, why in the world did she ever wind up with someone like me?
Article by Lou Krieger of Royal Vegas Poker
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