I came across this article about women in poker. The entire article is pretty LOL.

The dumbest part is in the first paragraph where he says that there are only TWO female poker players in the world whom he would fear at the poker table, and that the number of world class female poker players can be counted one ONE HAND!

2? One hand? that's it?
This guy must be the best in the world!

http://www.thepokerfarm.com/opinion-pages/women-poker/

IDK Jen might be tough...she'll put you quads

Yeah, really bad article - the guy clearly has no idea what he's talking about.

He doesn't even mention Leo Margets FFS - a great player who has had some big scores.

27th in the 2009 WSOP Main Event for $352,000
3rd in the Aussie Millions for $54,270,
1st in the Spanish Poker Tour Grand Final at Lloret de Mar $20,364
1st again at the Full Tilt Masters Series for $132,237

This is actually not that far from the truth, can you name more than 5?

This article seems to be written from a live poker point of view.. I didn't agree with the part about "the poker room remains male-dominated and intimidating to outsiders."

Intimidating? come on. And online it isn't even an issue of course. There are other reasons for the low participation of women in poker. Higher risk aversion is one of them.

Ofc there are more than 5, that's the point of this thread.
To say that there are only 2 female players in the world whom he would fear at his table is just such a laughably naive and dumb statement.

I would really like to see this guy name 498 men who he thinks are better than Harman, Rousso, Boeree, etc. I'm not even sure I could come up with 498 men to name without wanting to shoot myself first. In tourney poker, I would assume the top 10 or 20 women are in the top 500 overall due to the rough proportion of women in major tournaments.

Who does this guy think he is? Jeff Kimber. Only $1,275,363 in lifetime tournament winnings. Considering how many entries he has on poker pages to accumulate those winnings, he must have played a lot, so I doubt he has too amazing of an ROI himself.

I thought it would be interesting to see how many women have more lifetime tourney winnings than Jeff. Hoping to see a bit more than this (12 total if I didn't screw up searching), but c'est la vie.

Kathy Liebert 50th $5.84M
Vanessa Selbst 68th $4.93M
Annie Duke 94th $4.27M
Annette Obrestad 119th $3.74M
Vanessa Rousso 132nd $3.47M
Jennifer Harman 228th $2.63M
JJ Liu 234th $2.58M
Liv Boeree 320th $2.15M
Mimi Tran 457th $1.65M
Clonie Gowen 460th $1.63M
Vicky Coren 480th $1.57M
Lucille Cailly 515th $1.49M (8622nd 6 mos ago...2nd in an EPT main event is always good)

Jeff Kimber 561st $1.42M (biggest win $168.8k: 2500 Euro buy-in World HU Champ. Barcelona 2007; best WSOP finish 2nd)

Of course, this measurement isn't perfect since Jamie Gold and Jerry Yang are ranked 5th and 23rd all-time, respectively.

And with the free searches I had for today, I figure I would compare Jeff to Annette and both Vanessas on Sharkscope. Unfortunately, Annette is hurting without her WSOPE bracelet documented, and LOL sample size for everyone.

Name	Events	Avg. Profit	Avg. Buyin	Avg. ROI per tourney	Overall ROI	Total Profit
Vanessa Selbst	45	$4,003	$6,738	125%	59%	$180,120
Annette Obrestad	43	-$9,458	$11,856	-50%	-80%	-$406,689
Vanessa Rousso	82	$3,847	$9,798	9%	39%	$315,451
Jeff Kimber	22	$416	$4,284	-25%	10%	$9,147

Not really sure what lifetime winnings have to do with anything, most of the people on that list are not very good and certainly not someone any good player would fear to have at their tables. I guess it all depends on definition
but agree with Busto_soon that there are not that much more than five female players you would fear having at your table, that is not the same as saying there aren't a bunch of female players that are very good and cutting significantly into your EV to have at your table that you would rather be without. Obviously that article and the author is a joke, everything that site does is just meant to controversial and create attention (guess it worked).

This one of those stupid opinion pieces where someone shoots off their mouth to make noise and get their name out. If he even had a sliver of integrity, he would make available a list of the 498 male players he thinks are better.

Don't hold your breath waiting. He's certainly smart enough to know his statement doesn't stand up to any scrutiny.

I agree. Because when he gets to male player #368 or whatever, too many men and women would yell, Vanessa Rousso (or other elite female player of one's choosing) is way better than that guy!!

I actually have to agree with this clown at least in part. If you were to ask me which female players I would least like to see at my table, then it would be Annette and V. Selbst. They're both very aggressive and very good at hand reading skills.

I'm not factoring in how much money anyone has won, just which ones I'd least like to play against, given my level of respect for their games.

Selbst may very well be one of the top players in the world, period right now, but she does have a tendency to get a weebit spewy at times (like today 5/20 at Bellagio WPT championship where she was #2 in chips one minute and then busto 15 minutes later).

Not sure why Annette is not playing more? I hardly ever see her playing many of the big tourneys.

I also have a lot of respect for Rousso's game and I do think the poker gods have been the main culprit standing in the way of more big dollar cashes.

This indicates spew how?

Annette plays often enough and is doing great, recently having won one of the Wynn Classic $1k's and finishing 3rd in another.

She claims she was "thin value" betting . . . into the nuts.

If Vanessa has a weakness, it may be trying to run over the nuts.

I know, I was cheering her on in those, but have seen/heard little of her otherwise. I was just meaning to say it would be great to see her playing some of the big tourneys (with all due respect to our friends at the Wynn).

By the way, wasn't she the one famous for saying "Girls can't play poker"???

How do you define world-class? By my definitions I haven't seen a world-class name listed in this thread yet, male or female. Also I'm not sure about how many are in the top 100 or 500 but I'm pretty confident there is no female player in the top 10 right now. I think if there were 2 5knl+ 6m tables with 5 solid regulars at those stakes each that there's not a single female in the world who could sit at either table and be profitable. Tournaments are just such a terrible judge of actual skill because first off so much luck/variance and second off most tournaments you don't even have to compete with other good players it's just who can beat up donks the best. I guess that's a skill but to me world-class implies you can play against/compete/beat the other world-class players. Right now those are guys like sauce, isildur, ike, zeejustin, etc. There's a few other guys who are probably close but I can't think of a single female player who comes even close to being mentioned with those names. If any of Annette/Selbst/Rouso/Harmon sat at a Stars 20knl table I'd be pretty shocked if they didn't fill up pretty quickly and they would likely be massive underdogs in such a lineup.

Still not seeing it...



Who are you? I don't recall any other females being there who I didn't recognize.

There's a lot of wrong in this post.
But one of the biggest wrongs is the assumption that a world class player has to play 20knl in order to be considered world class.
The other big wrong is thinking Jen Harmon could not or does not play those stakes and much, much higher.

I can kind of see how Vanessa Selbst can look a little spewy. I've seen her 6-bet shove J7s into AA. But it's going to happen to any LAG occasionally. If you never get caught looking silly, you're not a true LAG

Yeah, if you're talking "world class" then overall poker skills should all be included, not just NLHE. In almost every other game, Jennifer Harman > most high stakes online pros.

Besides, great players should be great both online and live.
Guys like Jason Mercier and Eugene Katchalov can do both, which is what really makes them great.

Put any of those high stakes online only players on a table full of live players, and I guarantee they won't be a huge favorite. Live is a different game.


It annoys me how isildur's name is always mentioned as one of the "best"
He's an overall losing player with no concept of bankroll management who would be broke so many times over if stars weren't feeding and staking him. The only thing he has going for him is the guts to play high stakes.

Neither did Vanessa, apparently

ok granted I was discussing world class at nlhe I don't know anything about how good people are at lhe/mixed games/plo/etc. but you aren't trying to say Harmon is world class at nlhe are you? Because if she sat at a 5/10nl online table I'd bet money that she'd be a pretty big spot and the waitlists would fill. But if we are talking about nlhe how can you be considered world class if you don't play against the best in the world? That's like trying to say some of the best baseball players in the world are in the minors.

lmao you can not be serious. Mercier is very good at poker. He's not even close to top 20 in the world though and again would be a fish in a table full of nosebleed regs. Almost all good cash pros have had success when they try to play tourneys. Almost all tourney pros (Mercier's an exception because he's actually good at poker) end up getting crushed whenever they try to play cash.

Because it's pretty much the consensus of everyone who has played him that he is in the top 5 HUNL players in the world. Do you know who Ike Haxton is? Is he a winning player? Because he's considered by some to be the best in the world and everyone thinks he's at least top 5. Can't find the quote now but Ike was quoted as saying that isildur was one of the best players he had ever played and that he was crazy quick to adjust. Oh btw he also won 2 SCOOPs recently so surprise surprise a good cash player crushed tourneys as well. Also lol at Stars feeding him money or else he would be broke. How do you think he got the money to play nosebleeds on FTP in the first place? You realize he's played a lot on Euro sites and built his roll that way right? Yes he's a degenerate and yes he probably plays higher than he should, but he's also really ****ing good and an example of someone who is definitely world class.

So again it depends how you define world class. If top 100 = world class there might be a female or two in there. If top 20 or less is world class it's not even close.

I feel like in NLHE there are a handful of women who I'd definitely not like on my left, however in the mixed game world I can't think of one :/ Jen Harmon is the closest.

I see 4, maybe 5 world class players on that list, and I think "world class" is a stretch even for them. But I think there numerous others without the celebrity or results yet.

Among the L.A./Vegas High stakes reg's over the last decade there have really been no women who have lasted outside jen harmon. I'm not 100% sure why I'd guess its a mix between how horrible a job it actually is and how many more options a woman has in life as compared to the really freaky anti-social specimens who run in this crowd. Among this crowd would be many who are considered "world class" most of us spend the majority of our time in the big mix games and not nlhe.

I really hope this changes, but i doubt it will. A woman winning the main event would go a long way. It would be one of the best things that could ever happen to poker.

yeah, how do u define world class? and world class in what, live or online, MTTs, NLH cash, mixed games cash? how many men are "world class"?

in live MTTs the only female I consider truly elite is Selbst (I'd rather not have her to my left, but by no means am I afraid of her), and maybe Obrestad. Mixed games obviously Harman (if she still plays, prob does). I don't know much about Ho, but it sounds like she plays high, like 400-800 prob, and beats it, but while that would mean she's a great player, it doesn't mean she's world class, world class is 4k-8k (prob not anymore, like 1k-2k or something). it's unlikely there are many unknown female superstars, because they usually get attention right away. also, male and female intelligence is different in the sense that there are more men on the opposite poles of the spectrum (very dumb/very smart), and more women in the middle (avg intelligence), so while an avg woman is prob smarter than an avg man, the smartest man is smarter than the smartest woman, so with that in mind it's very possible for a woman to become very competent, but highly unlikely for her to become The Big Boss. If there are 300 world class players in the world, I think 5 or less are female.

Pretty hard to argue with this, especially NLH cash games online.