Dealing with a new player part 2: Adjusting to a female poker player

When it comes to making adjustments against a particular opponent sometimes it’s not just their style of play that will play a major role in how you adjust your play, sometimes their frame of mind, their gender, or their experience that will play an important factor in the way you handle them at a poker table. With this in mind I have created this 4-Part series on adjusting to certain players which will include:

• Adjusting to a player who is drunk
• Adjusting to female poker player
• Adjusting to a jerk
• Adjusting to a clueless player

These adjustments often carry-over to the table as a whole, and as you will see in this part regarding women players is not completely strategic, but is taken from my own personal observations: Enjoy.

As more and more women start participating in poker what was once seen as a man’s domain is slowly becoming more balanced, and because of this male poker players have to realize that the atmosphere in a poker-room has changed -for the better in my opinion.

Now, nothing I bring up about women poker players in this article has anything to do with their skill, or with how they approach the game; my aim is to point out specific ways you can act that will be best for everyone involved, male or female.

The first thing you need to realize is that when a women enters a poker game the men at the table will be off-balance for a little while as they try to feel her out -is she a new player or a solid poker player? And, more importantly for the sake if this article, is she a prude that is all business or is she pleasant and a bit flirty?

A friendly woman at a poker table instantly increase the profitability of the table, because every guy at the table is suddenly vying for her attention; you’ll see a lot more hero-calls and wild bluffs, as well as a lot more macho table-talk in these situations.

So when a friendly woman enters the game your goal should be to keep the atmosphere light, while at the same time keeping your poker game all business! One jerk, or off-color comment, can instantly change the mood of the table, so you want to be friendly, and more importantly you WANT the female to focus her attention on the other players, since this is a distraction for them. Basically, a female player increases profitability not because they are poor players -this is a moot point– but because the males at the table turn into schoolboys doing the poker equivalent of back-flips trying to gain the woman’s attention!

On the other hand, when a no-nonsense woman enters your game you can be fairly certain that the men will be put-off -not to the point that they leave the game, but to the point where you can see they are visibly uncomfortable. The times I have played with aggressive, serious, female poker players the game tends to tighten up a lot! In Part 3 of this series you’ll see that this isn’t just limited to female players when I tackle the Jerk at the poker table.