The same reason more women don't sit around playing video games for hours on end - we have better **** to do.

Most of the gamers are women. But as you can see from e-sports teams, they are men, and men put more time in gaming, and more so to more competitive gaming. There are many games that women play that are not so or at all competitive. Some article says 5% of WSOP players were women (and 10% of those who made money there were women).

arn't women*


lol if most gamers were women. it would be a funny experience i think

FWIW there are some weird cases of men dominating the top echelon of certain endeavors even though most of the participants are women. For example, a lot of the flute players in major US orchestras are men, even though women dominate the feeder system (US high school bands.) I haven't seen a good explanation for this.

They do other things with their flutes.

If Poker sites looked more FarmVille or FantasyPrincess or Cutey Cutey bear then more women's would be attracted to online poker.

Plus women ( I'm generalising) don't like losing. The 10% or so of women who are long time winners probably like poker. But then again who says that statistic is true. Imagine if 90 % of women were long time winners at the expense of men. So apart from certain IPs and cool sounding names being blessed by the RNGs then perhaps women in general are being chosen along with multi tablers and players who have mastered the plus EV mouse movements.

Can you be any more of a condescending twit?

How about the simple fact that legal online poker is simply not available to a large number of poker-playing women.

The page layout is NOT what is keeping more women from playing.

I don't understand what you are saying. Why would women be more affected by bad online options than men?

It wouldn't.

She's right about the condescending twit part though. Aggressively skinning/branding your site towards the hyper-feminine would almost certainly put off as many as it'd attract. Women are not 12 years old (except the ones that literally are, I guess).

It could be argued that more casual branding similar to Farmville et al could do a lot to attract players, but this is irrespective of gender.

If you want an actual suggestion? Get rid of the chat box so idiots can't flip their **** every time someone with even a vaguely feminine name/avatar sits to ply.

Because they do not believe in the honesty of casino and they are afraid of gambling. They have worst reaction than man...

LOL
I never tilt in the casino. I can control my emotions so well and even when I'm losing I'm still focused. I go through 17 hour sessions playing my A and B game. Online is so boring. MTTs are fine but online died several years ago. But I feel like life is going by me and I'm isolated with my laptop. No more online.

I read that some orchestras switched to "blind auditions" for roles in the orchestra where they only heard the music, they didn't know anything about the person. Females ended up getting hired at a much higher proportion with these types of auditions.

I am also in favor of blind auditions. I have done quite a few audtions, some blind and some not.

Even so, I think that something else is going on. The number of male flute players in orchestras is crazy compared to the feeder system. When I was in a band in high school or college, ALL of the flute players were female. For even 10% of the players in major orchestras to be male would seem to be a statistical outlier.

An interesting story about blind auditions:

A long time ago (30 years maybe?) the Detroit Symphony Orchestra took all kinds of heat because only three of the musicians were black. There were demands that the orchestra should be more diverse and the DSO wound up having to hire more black musicians--even though all of the mostly white players had won their jobs through blind auditions.

"Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell covers this topic in some detail. As soon as the orchestra in question (Berlin? I don't recall) adopted blind auditions, their hiring practices changed. (It's been a long time since I read the book, so if details are off I apologize.)

I'll have to check that book. Ir raises some interesting questions. How about this for a start:

Does outside scrutiny promote meritocracy or is white dominance in itself a problem that must be addressed? Maybe that's the real issue here.

Frankly, I don't care whether the musicians are 75% black, 75% white, or 50/50, I just care about the music. But if I was going to playing with those musicians, I would want only the best hired.

Would you want to be on a sports team (or a high school band) with a white, asian or black player? The answer is obvious--it doesn't matter as long as the kid can play. Why should a major orchestra be any different?

When my wife and I went to an agency to adopt two older children we had to fill out a questionaire about what kinds of children we would accept. One of the questions was about race. We marked "Any."

My sister adopted a baby. My wife and I adopted three biological brothers, ages 7, 8 and 9. What is the ethnic mix? It doesn't matter. My extended family is diverse, but what color I am, what color my wife and sister are, or what color our children are is completely unimportant. Skin color is no more important than the fact that my oldest granddaughter (just turned 10) is 5 foot two. It's just one thing about that person.

My very introverted father has written a lot on this topic. I showed this to him a few weeks ago and he said that you absolutely nailed it. He's retired now but he was a big deal in local radio for more than 40 years at radios stations all over the country.

Someone once said to him, "How can you be an introvert? You talk to thousands of people every day."

His response was "I don't talk to people, I talk to a microphone."

+1

Katie:

I'm addressing you in this thread because I wanted to thank you publicly.

I watched some of your coaching videos on floattheturn.com and something really jumped out at me. You hammered away at the idea of having your VPIP and PFR numbers be close together. You mentioned it over and over, in fact, at one point you said that if you see someone with numbers like 19/15 (I don't remember if those were the exact numbers) that player is probably a pro.

The thing is, I knew that those numbers should be close, but I was working on other parts of my game and I wasn't paying attention to how big my VPIP sometimes was. You gave me a much-needed reality check. After keeping an eye on those numbers for a while, I was shocked at how often I was getting way out of line. When I tightened it up I immediately felt the difference in my play. Every time that I get the urge to limp in with 64s, I think about WWKD--What Would Katie Do?

Listening to you pound away at the importance of those two numbers has made a big and very positive change in my play.

One more thing. I read your husband's book and I have a question. As a poker player and singer (army band, retired) I'm curious about something in your husband's book. He obviously taught you how to play poker. Were you able to teach him how to sing?

I would be in this group. I rarely interact with poker players online. And to be honest i don't have a lot in common with them.

I don't even really watch it on tv now. It's just not my energy.

Also a fear of a gamergate like culture.And there is misogyny in poker. Or rather some people who play it. It can feel more difficult to deal with in a male environment and kill the joy so to speak.

But lets face it men play poker a lot of the time to spend time with other men. Not women. In fact it is get to away from women. So it drew a lot of men.

I think you are talking about live poker rather then online.

It can be both. I play online to get away from my wife. Not the only reason, but definitely one of the perks.

and women dont play poker to get away from their spouse because...?

That's what the kitchen is for. (kidding ladies)

Because men and women are simply built differently. Just because we should all be treated the same doesn't mean we are the same. Men and women both have different strengths and weaknesses along with interests and everything else you can think of.

Hi there,

I am new here and new to poker. I play online from India and in my limited experience, I am always being addressed as dude/bro/man in the forums or in chat boxes while playing. I find it a little weird that the 'go to' assumption for everybody playing or even in this site is that I am a guy!

But in some ways I find it more comforting that they think I am a guy and just go with it. I must admit I do feel a bit intimidated while playing or interacting in the forums because it is so male dominated. Partly because I am very new to the game and also not into social media but I do feel more women playing or commenting in all the groups would make for a more comfortable experience for people like me.

But similar to me I am sure there are other female players online all over the world who just goes along with the assumption that they are male players. There are cognitive biases that are inherent within us and female online players might think being vocal about their gender might bring about those cognitive biases from their opponents and they might change their gameplay. This would primarily occur implicitly of course and not overtly. However I have no data to back this up.

But in regards to brain wiring, several publications (See Autism Research Centre, Cambridge University publications for gender differences in cognitive tasks) have shown that male brains have better pattern recognition abilities and more detailed - oriented attention orientation and autism is an extreme form of this male brain. Female brains are more empathetic at a population level with greater holistic processing. Hence it can be speculated that male brain in general have higher percentage of some traits that naturally attract them to poker.
Of course there are outliers. And it doesn't mean that female brain is not wired to become good at poker but they might use other cognitive domains at a higher degree for eg: greater empathic abilities/putting yourself in others shoes. It can be hypothesized that male brain in general find it easier to navigate the course of becoming a full-time professional poker player.