Why aren't women more successful in poker?

sylpoker1 · Jun 1, 2014

vanessa is a great player and fun to watch too!! glad to see she won another bracelet. and she usually is well behaved at the tables, most of the time too.. is good to see her win again..

hashtag · Jun 1, 2014

Well, first you are correct in the below list.

*patience
*basic math competence
*psychology
*situational awareness
*well timed aggression

I would say that is a very short list that is missing many ingredients. I would start there for your answer.

I'm not sure patience is something either gender is good at if I'm honest. It looks like some people are patient in some ways, but not patient in others, and it is very dependent on the individual. E.g. person patient enough to be a programmer and deal with computers but who cannot be ****ed waiting in a queue for a burger. Person "patient" enough to go clothes shopping, but does not have the patience for fishing. Etc.

Psychology I'm afraid you are just wrong about (ignore this post if you disagree ;-). Men wrote the dictionary on this (like it or not). Body language is what you are talking about and women are unquestionably superior on reading this.

Fact is, men are from Mars, women are from Venus. We play poker on Mars. It is not popular on Venus.

I don't like it any more than you.

fordman427 · Jun 1, 2014

I think more women do not play poker because they look at it as a all male sport. a few women bracelet winners would change that.

JPoling · Jun 1, 2014

I would'nt say women are less successful then men in poker. Just less of them. Kinda harder to cokpare. Actually is quite a bit of women poker players that are very successful.

prepare · Jun 1, 2014

hackmeplz said:
It wasn't even for a significant amount of chips compared to her stack. I wasn't commenting on how lucky she was, I was commenting on how it shows how fundamentally unsound her game is.

edit: I'm not calling her bad, I'm saying she has some leaks and is nowhere near as good as her results are. Also I'd be shocked if she wasn't enough to instantly fill any high-stakes cash game (live or online) and be the fish at the table.

There is no legitimate basis for saying her game is "unsound." So she was a underdog in one hand in an entire poker tournament. Yes, that tends to happen a lot to tournament winners, most winners get lucky and yes, even suck out! So what? It's impossible for a tournament winner to always have the best odds for every hand that they play. And I am sure if I went through the hand histories of every wsop winner this series I could get a similar hand where they got lucky when they were supposed to lose, but didn't.

Not to say that your wrong, (which I think you are but that's a whole nother post) but if you are going to call a three time bracelet winner an overrated player who has 10.5 MILLION dollars poker winnings, you better make a better argument than showcasing one hand. In one tournament. That she won.

hackmeplz · Jun 2, 2014

prepare said:
There is no legitimate basis for saying her game is "unsound." So she was a underdog in one hand in an entire poker tournament. Yes, that tends to happen a lot to tournament winners, most winners get lucky and yes, even suck out! So what? It's impossible for a tournament winner to always have the best odds for every hand that they play. And I am sure if I went through the hand histories of every WSOP winner this series I could get a similar hand where they got lucky when they were supposed to lose, but didn't.

Not to say that your wrong, (which I think you are but that's a whole nother post) but if you are going to call a three time bracelet winner an overrated player who has 10.5 MILLION dollars poker winnings, you better make a better argument than showcasing one hand. In one tournament. That she won.

ok I've typed out and deleted a few responses, because I don't really want to get into a big argument here. I can promise you though that hand was bad though. It's not about the hand her opponent had it's just about how it exposes a huge flaw in her thinking during that one hand. She's either making a flaw of 4b shoving way too much in that spot or making a flaw of not picking the best hands to 4b shove with there (most likely she doesn't pick the best hands and instead just does it when she feels like it, and against someone good like her opponent, Ryan Fee, that's going to be a pretty big leak). Now personally I've never played against her so maybe it was something rare but I promise you no one who makes a living from poker will defend that hand being good.

My main annoyance with her winning and everyone worshipping her though is that I'm somewhat friends with the guy she beat, and the amount of people talking shit about how good she is and how it was karma he lost (granted he was being a bit of a dick) is just extremely annoying when he was clearly the much better player. On twitter he offered to play her in some 300k sngs (I'm assuming that was the difference between 1st and 2nd so effectively what they were playing in the wsop?). If she's better why would she not agree to play?

Also $10.5 million in winnings is a bit misleading. She plays a ton of high buy-in tournaments including high rollers. How much in buy-ins has she spent? How much of herself did she have in the tournaments where she won the $10.5 million? I would actually be surprised if her overall profits were over $1 million but it's possible.

Also I promise none of this is sexism it's more anti-mttproism I promise I'd be saying the same thing if a guy mtt pro luckbox whose results were better than their skills (basically all of them) beat someone like dmoongirl or that Russian online 5knl reg girl and everyone was proclaiming how awesome they were and how that showed they were better than the person they beat.

rifflemao · Jun 2, 2014

hackmeplz said:
ok I've typed out and deleted a few responses, because I don't really want to get into a big argument here. I can promise you though that hand was bad though. It's not about the hand her opponent had it's just about how it exposes a huge flaw in her thinking during that one hand. She's either making a flaw of 4b shoving way too much in that spot or making a flaw of not picking the best hands to 4b shove with there (most likely she doesn't pick the best hands and instead just does it when she feels like it, and against someone good like her opponent, Ryan Fee, that's going to be a pretty big leak). Now personally I've never played against her so maybe it was something rare but I promise you no one who makes a living from poker will defend that hand being good.

For the sake of learning more about EV calculations, what is the math behind why the play is considered unsound? I estimate that 89o has around 28% equity against the range he might call a shove with, but I don't know how to calculate the rest.

rifflemao · Jun 2, 2014

rifflemao said:
For the sake of learning more about EV calculations, what is the math behind why the play is considered unsound?

Actually, nevermind on this. Found an article and want to do my own homework.

jarzi85 · Jun 2, 2014

They don't have time for stupidity: P

taban13 · Jun 2, 2014

Women in poker is certainly much less than men and therefore think they are worse, but they have such a thing as female intuition in poker is sometimes very necessary thing.

hackmeplz · Jun 2, 2014

Back to the original topic though, I was actually reading some studies the other day on male/female proficiency in math. In general the average did not particularly favor one gender or the other, contrary to popular belief, but the variance in men was higher. This is one reason why the heavy majority of math geniuses are men, and it's the same reason why the heavy majority of people with learning disabilities are men. If you then compound that with the sheer amount of men who play compared with women, it's not surprising at all that you don't particularly see many women who are world-class, but in the middling ranks you still see plenty of competent women, probably around proportional with how many play. Similarly I can't think of a single whale who's been female. Part of this also may have to do with the gender pay gap, and someone with a ton of extra cash to blow being more likely to be male, but I don't know.

prepare · Jun 3, 2014

hackmeplz said:
ok I've typed out and deleted a few responses, because I don't really want to get into a big argument here. I can promise you though that hand was bad though. It's not about the hand her opponent had it's just about how it exposes a huge flaw in her thinking during that one hand. She's either making a flaw of 4b shoving way too much in that spot or making a flaw of not picking the best hands to 4b shove with there (most likely she doesn't pick the best hands and instead just does it when she feels like it, and against someone good like her opponent, Ryan Fee, that's going to be a pretty big leak). Now personally I've never played against her so maybe it was something rare but I promise you no one who makes a living from poker will defend that hand being good.

My main annoyance with her winning and everyone worshipping her though is that I'm somewhat friends with the guy she beat, and the amount of people talking shit about how good she is and how it was karma he lost (granted he was being a bit of a dick) is just extremely annoying when he was clearly the much better player. On twitter he offered to play her in some 300k sngs (I'm assuming that was the difference between 1st and 2nd so effectively what they were playing in the wsop?). If she's better why would she not agree to play?

Also $10.5 million in winnings is a bit misleading. She plays a ton of high buy-in tournaments including high rollers. How much in buy-ins has she spent? How much of herself did she have in the tournaments where she won the $10.5 million? I would actually be surprised if her overall profits were over $1 million but it's possible.

Also I promise none of this is sexism it's more anti-mttproism I promise I'd be saying the same thing if a guy mtt pro luckbox whose results were better than their skills (basically all of them) beat someone like dmoongirl or that Russian online 5knl reg girl and everyone was proclaiming how awesome they were and how that showed they were better than the person they beat.

I actually think this is a fair response. Obviously I disagree that Mo was a "way better player" just based on what I know of Selbts. I don't think there are that many people on earth that are clearly better than her. But then again, I really didn't watch the heads up fight so I wouldn't know how good Mo was. But as you said, you don't want to get in a big argument, and I don't either, so we can probably just stop this conversation all together.

suby_rafael · Jun 3, 2014

Selbsty will not only inspire many ladies to take up poker but also how to boss around everyone at the table. It might even create a revolution of sorts.

As long as the majority in the revolution turn up straight !! ... No offense to all the lesbians out there !!

rifflemao · Jun 3, 2014

missjacki said:
I don't see anything wrong with button raising with 89o, and then if you suspect a light 3bet you 4bet bluff them using your chip stack and their tourney life to your advantage. Of course she doesn't put him on a hand as strong as AK, she expects him to fold and she expects to be live when he calls with the top of his range (as she was).

Vanessa has a very aggressive style. When you raise light as often as she does, you have to be prepared to fight back when players 3bet you light. If you always folded when you got 3bet then your aggressive style would be a huge leak. She has to adjust her opponent's 3betting range because they are adjusting to her button raising range.

Vanessa is clearly a great player, and for every hand where she makes a mistake, there are apparently thousands of others where she has played the situation and the player perfectly.

After looking further into the hand in question, I also think 4-bet shoving in that spot was an error. The reason is Fee 3-bet to around 25% of his stack of roughly 21BBs, and he did it from the Big Blind. It would be hard to argue that Fee or another good player would actually 3-bet\fold there for 25% of his stack, especially against a player who can 4-bet shove with air making a light 3-bet a risky proposition.

I think Selbst rarely has fold equity in that spot, so shoving leaves her one way to win: by getting it in as an underdog with 28-30% equity against his range (assuming 99+ and all combos of KQ, AQ, AK). She has almost 36% equity against the unpaired combos that make up the majority (64%) of that range though, and it's common for chipleaders\table captains to take out shortstacks in similar fashion.

There's a lot about hyper-aggressive play that I don't understand too, so there may be an argument for 3-betting light in Fee's situation there, but if he did it with his stack against Vanessa Selbst and her stack in that spot, I would definitely call it a leak. As played, I think he played AKo perfectly since the size of the 3-bet was apparently just enough to leave doubt and induce a shove by a much worse hand.

magicius · Jun 3, 2014

Ok one simple answer....
Because less female players play poker... Womans still thinks its a mans game... Its still taboo for most of them... But i think if there was same amount of players it would be tie...
In my country poker is still taboo,and if you say you play it they would consider you are sick(gambling problems) like alcholic,junkey and such....
Tbh noone i mean noone knows i am playing poker.... And thats situation with major population here....
I know few people that were gambling addicts,they did win and lose houses,cars,lot of money...(my father lost wedding ring...) and that situation wont change here for a while.... I lie to my wife i am playing with play money

Sent from my HTC Desire X using Tapatalk

ihaveatoaster · Jun 4, 2014

Hi missjacki, I'm a lady and I play poker on pokerstars. I have to agree that whenever I have played in poker tournaments with friends in real life there are often no women. I got sick of coming in last so I started playing online to practice and I'm really enjoying it. I placed first in a micro tournament for the first time a few weeks ago

. I'm currently stuck as a breakeven/slightly losing player at the cash and zoom tables though. I actually made a post in this section about it and I'm already getting awesome feedback from people here. I have a lot of improving to do but I'm definitively going to put the effort in because poker is just an awesome game. I don't know what level you're at but I'm currently playing 2NL. Perhaps I will play on your level one day and we will meet

- Tanya

teepack · Jun 4, 2014

So if you are saying it was a bad play by Selbst to raise preflop with 8-9, then it must have been a dreadful play for the dude she beat in the other tourney when he shoved with 7-9 and lost to her K-J on heads up. When it gets down to the final table and you are in position to steal blinds and have a much bigger stack than the SB or BB, doing what Selbst did is basic strategy. Even with him having an AK, she still basically had a 1 in 3 chance of winning the hand and it looked like she had about a 5:1 advantage in chips. She got lucky, sure. But she also put herself into a position where she could take that chance and not be harmed too badly. That is skill.

rifflemao · Jun 4, 2014

One last thing about the Selbst v Fee hand, just to look at it from all angles. She started with @ 28% equity against his range and was only risking around 20% of her starting stack. She raced with nearly 36% equity against AdKh for only 20% of her stack. She starts with 36% equity roughly 64% of the time against the unpaired combos in Fee's range.

So while it may be a mistake to expect fold equity from a 4-bet shove based on Fee's stack, if he had overplayed AKo and 3-bet shoved for mostly fold equity, Vanessa may have had a reasonable argument for calling there anyway. I think it ultimately boils down to this quote by Mike Caro:

"Aggression is rarely wrong in poker, and the times when it is wrong it isn't wrong by much."

EDIT: Basically what teepack said more succinctly: "Even with him having an AK, she still basically had a 1 in 3 chance of winning the hand and it looked like she had about a 5:1 advantage in chips."

A2345Razz · Jun 18, 2014

Selbst is a tremendous NLH donkament player; lets not conflate that with being one of the best POKER PLAYERS in the world- those are two entirely different things.

Also, I find most women play a bit too risk averse and then spazz if you pound on them continually instead of balancing out their range.

Its like they'll give up on pot after pot and theCR shove for no reason and get stacked if someone has it.

Just my observations...there is also the fact that intelligence is distributed differently within male and female respective populations leading to a lot less females of the highly gifted/genius designation.....but with a higher average IQ on average.

That also goes a way to explaining a lot of discrepancies in behavior and very high level intellectual achievement between the sexes....not ALL...but some.

TetraMinbet · Jun 18, 2014

I believe poker is a male dominated game. Men are used to running it all. Things might be different now, but last time I played a live tourney around ten years ago the guys treated me like I should be barefoot and pregnant and nowhere near a cardroom. They tried to run over me and I busted out a couple of them and didn't hit first but did cash. This probably turns a lot of women off to poker

They have a tendency to shutup after you take out their buddies, but sometimes it seems like a major obstacle to overcome especially if one has a lot of social anxiety to begin with. Probably the only reason I cashed in that tourney was because they were even worse than me and really had nothing going for them but drunken belligerent trash talk.

Also, I think more women than men are in situations personally where they get run over by a spouse or partner. If your everyday life is a constant battle to begin with, it's not going to be any easier making a stand in poker. You can't succeed in poker without making some kind of a stand.

Getting run over by family or work peeps can make me really tilty. I'll go play in the wrong state of mind-if I beat up on someone who ran me over I feel better but if I can't control my emotion I'd better stay away BC I will lose.

Playing poker still has kind of a stigma to it, especially for a woman and god forbid you beat the wrong people. Taking down a major pot in a game with people from work can get you in trouble. You don't mean any harm-you just love the game-but work peeps think you're trying to hustle everyone.

I do believe women might get better reads due to intuition, but I'm sitting here thinking I'd better learn the math because I feel like the more emotion you take out of it, the more of an edge you would have.

Logic beats emotion every time.

I believe women are VERY successful at poker. There just aren't that many of them.

starting_at_the_bottom · Sep 14, 2014

To answer the original question. Its because they cannot use pee bottles, thus keep getting folded out when nature calls, thus losing money ergo poorer results.

TeUnit · Sep 14, 2014

i think its just a numbers game, less woman play

think poker is still kinda viewed as a "mans" game for some reason

srissofredi · Sep 14, 2014

Less women play. Obviously.

bigjay2007 · Sep 16, 2014

Only my personal experience, but the women i know (including my wife) who play on occasion, really don't have a lot of keen interest or patience. It's like how many women compared to men watch football on Sunday. Some games attract men while others attract women. Plain and simple.

Shumkoolie · Sep 25, 2014

I think going back to OP, it's a simple answer, and it has nothing to do with math, the competitiveness, the killer instinct. It's simply numbers. Fewer women play than men (obviously). However, let's look a little more closely. The really successful women that are on the circuit are on par with the really successful male players. Why? Because they study the game, work on fixing their leaks, and play. Being female does not put you at a competitive disadvantage to men.

It's like Phil Ivey once said about Jennifer Harman. He said she's not one of the best female players in the world, she's one of the best players in the world. It was a disservice, that he pointed out and he was bang on. We can say that about Vanessa Selbst as well. She's one of the top "players" in the world, forget gender.

It's a great game to play, whether it's in a more relaxed, casual environment of a home game or a competitive venue like a casino (I'm leaving online out of this comparison). It's unfortunate that there aren't more women playing this game, but at least the ones that I've had the experience to play against, their abilities range from beginner to really good, exactly the same as the men.

Why aren't women more successful in poker?

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