There is no gender in poker; never has been, never will be.
Poker is merely about the extraction of $$$; gender doesn't enter into the equation.
Money is devoid of sexuality.

The real issue is always establishing where you sit in the pecking order and the skill level of your opponents. If you let sexuality cloud your judgement you are displaying a weakness.

Eliminating, or working within the weaknesses you are aware of, helps with maximising extraction.

lol , see u girls at the tables

Yeah i would agree. Also I'm guessing she is a good TAG and rec players are often going to give more respect to TAGs that they think are good than LAGS especially if they see a LAG make a 'spewy play' which may not actually be spewy at all.

Talking to the dealer like you are old friends when you first sit down, then not saying another word is another big clue that someone is decent imo.

Just ran into this early yesterday morning in New Orleans...had flown in, arrived around 8pm the night before and was seated immediately...table finally broke around 6am and I move to a table with perhaps one player I recognized as having played with/against at any prior occasion (which turned out to have been earlier in the evening).

Start out absolutely card dead and since this was a table ($1/$2) where ~$20 P/F was common-place, I didn't want to try and make a move with the usual crap of 9-3 offsuit. Probably folded the first dozen hands I saw and finally pick something up that was remotely playable (KK)...early raise to $7 followed by a fold and I went to $~22 expecting someone to come over the top. Instead it was folded all the way around.

As the next hand is being dealt, I was trying to figure out what prompted everyone to suddenly pucker so tight that they wouldn't play their any-two for even the raise I had made. The response? You guessed it..."we know how you play."

A few hands later, holding deuces, I call some nominal raise P/F and hit my set on the flop. With two hearts out there, I wasn't wanting people to hang around for cheap, so I re-pop a $40 lead in a large enough amount to weed out the chasers. Leader goes all-in on the premise that I 'was just making a move.' He was playing a sooooooooted AK (apparently with Ah).

I'd swear there is no method to the madness of some of the 'logic' employed by the males at the tables...but as long as it keeps paying for my trips over there, they can keep it up.

Every day that goes by, I am more and more thankful for being a woman in this game. I am constantly learning more about myself and human behavior. Experiencing this stuff has also helped me in other areas of my life, which translates into more than just another winning poker session.

Glad to hear that it is working for you ladies. Somehow it is not what happens to me. I get called all the time. Even if I've folded every hand for an hour, I'll make a good size raise or 3 bet and get called in 5 places.

I keep hearing this "they assume you are tight" rumor, but it's not working that way for me at all.

Shauna

I think image is more important than gender. I've been perceived as both extremely nitty and extremely laggy - omcs have been unable to fold top pair to my shove on a monotone board before (so not being perceived as nitty), while other people have made really big laydowns. So i think a big part of it depends on the notion of winning/losing image as people are more likely to pick on a player with bad image. Like some people for sure stereotypes in this way where they think being female = being nitty, but against more decent players they look at how you actually play.

But of course a lot of times people just play their own two napkins with their heads down and dgaf who/what you are

I recently asked the men at my regular game if they play differently against women. They all answered yes.

I think women in poker definitely have an advantage mainly due to intimidation. I think most men find it a huge dent to their ego when being outplayed by a woman. Also I think men are easily distracted and there is nothing wrong with taking full advantage of that in my opinion. Deception is a big part of the game so if you think you can play this to your advantage then why not?

This article, "Are Women Better Decision Makers?", about how in gambling and other situations, women's risk strategies are inherently different from (and generally better than) men's, might be of interest to those reading this thread:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/op...ttom-well&_r=0

It looks like the discussion so far has been only about NL. At limit tables there are often just as many women as men playing. In my experience 9 out of 10 players I've played with have no idea how to play. Women play just as badly as men.

Interesting read, thanks!

So, I'm a guy and I find this thread interesting because I like picking up on cues from all players. Here's a few things I tend to pick up on. I don't mean to enforce any stereotypes here - I'll use any edge I can find, and social phenomenons happen... and then you can use those situations at your advantage to fool me, I guess

- The girlfriend: Comes in with her boyfriend, who also plays poker. I will tend to focus a bit more of my reads on that kind of person as there is some chance that she got pulled in the game by her boyfriend. (It is not a huge chance in my experience, but worth giving it your attention as it paid off a couple of times)
- The chatty one: Pretty chatty in between hands (It's pretty fun I have to admit! I like chit-chatting too) but the more you chat, the biggest sample size you give me to know if you're actually trying to fool me during a hand, or if you're having trouble making a decision (in which case the talking usually stops)

I'll usually play back with a good amount of chatting, or find some ways to discredit myself. Useful to get paid on the river sometimes.

My impression is that some players play kind of straight forward against girls, since they often think we are tight, and that some guys seem to bully more since they think we play fit or fold, and that our ranges are capped, so they can scoop the pot on most flops or even scare us off of our hands pre.
I'm curious to how you girls adjust. In larger buy-in live tournaments I often try to 4-bet the first time I'm 3-bet pre (early in the tourney or at a new table), just so the guys won't be picking on me later and maybe play more straight-forwardly. This usually just lasts for a while though :P (until they start to get suspicious about my VPIP)

I agree that "the girlfriend" is usually a weaker player than the boyfriend. That definitely does not hold with older married couples.

I am 59, and there are several married couples around my age that play in the local charity room. In every case, neither the husband nor the wife is a fish.

I saw an unfamiliar woman a week ago, and I asked if her husband was there. I was right, they both play but he had to do something else that night. Then I started a conversation about playing suited connectors. The idea of raising suited connectors in early position was new to her, but she definitely understood that she should limp with them when getting good odds.

Normally I don't give other players an idea of how much I know, but I wanted to test my theory of an older husband and wife team both being at least decent players. I haven't seen a counterexample yet.

I just posted a note about having read Vicky Coren's terrific book For Richer, for Poorer in the thread discussing Coren's decision to resign from Poker Stars. But I thought I'd mention it here as well, since it says a lot about the way she was treated as a woman (and how she handled herself) in a time when there only a few women playing.