The Wide, Wide World of Poker

Back in July of 2008 when I discovered video poker in the casino of a cruise ship I never imagined there was this wonderful world of poker out there. After returning home from the cruise I was watching a Texas holdem tournament on t.v. and decided it looked really interesting so I went online and looked up the rules and started watching more t.v. poker. It just happened that it was around the time that the 2008 WSOP was airing and I found it fascinating to watch. I saw the commercials for Full Tilt and Pokerstars.net and proceeded to download the software on my computer and that was the beginning of the journey that would soon turn to complete obsession with the best card game ever invented.

I had very little clue what I was doing when I played my first games, play money of course, but I loved every minute of it I started with cash games and having no clue about table selection I looked for the tables where the players had the least play money and sat down to play. I was amazed when I would actually win a pot. After a short while I discovered the play money sit-n-goes and that's where I totally fell in love with game. Not knowing what I was doing, I remember thinking it would be easier to play fewer people so I started with the 4 max sit-n-goes. I still remember the first one I won. I was so excited and it seems so funny now thinking back on it.

I started to read everything I could find on holdem and tried to better learn and understand the game. I continued to play for play money for several months then I discovered freerolls and would win $5 here and there just lose it much faster than I won it.

In April of 2009 I won a seat to the Cake (Players Only) $250K guarantee and decided if I was going to play in it I needed to get a feel for playing for real money on the Cake site so I made my first deposit of $60 and started playing some real money games. I played in the $250K and amazingly came in 49th out of 909 runners for a cash of $625, amazing and exciting. I started playing nothing but real money games then and that was all she wrote.

In May of 2009 I discovered PokerVT and asked my husband to give me the subscription for my Mother's Day present, which he agreed to do. This is where I have learned to play so much better poker and I continue to improve everyday. I would recommend a poker training site to anyone interested in playing poker and don't wait as long as I did to join.

Now that I've outlined my poker past, on to the main point of this post the online poker community and what a wonderful community it is, wow is the word to sum it up. No one in a poker player's day to day life really understands our obsession. Our friends and family think we have become compulsive gamblers and worry that we are going to gamble away the farm. To have found so many great people to discuss poker with through the forums, the PokerVT forum specifically, has been a God send. We can discuss hands and concepts and help each other become better players and most importantly we understand each other.

I have made some really great and wonderful friends through the PokerVT forum. They are from all over the world and range in age from around 19 to probably as old as 70. We all share things about poker with each other on the forum and on occasional conversations on Skype. I get together with a few great ladies to go over hand histories and discuss the game and we have all become great friends. It's amazing that some of my best friends I've never met face to face. The best part is that the poker community has no borders and no age or gender requirements we are all doing what we love and we all have the same goal, to improve our games as best we can.

In closing I want to say thank you to all my wonderful poker friends, you make the world's greatest game even better!

Part two of women in poker:

I have been thinking about this lady's tournament thing a bit more and I have a few after thoughts.

I think it's great that Pokerstars does satellite events for ladies only with seats to major ladies tournaments.

I think it's fine that they include a spa treatment in the package.

I think it rocks that they include a bootcamp with Vanessa Russo in the package.

I think I would attempt to win one of these packages.

Do I think that it makes me less of a good player to play in a ladies only event, NO!

I think men who play in lady's tournaments are showing a blatant disrespect for women, why else would they bother to play in a ladies tournament otherwise.

I think it was silly and ridiculous for Shaun Deeb to show up for the ladies event in drag.

I think it was absolutely infuriating that another guy used a tampon for a card protector, talk about disrespect and it was in awfully bad taste.

If some men are low enough to play in a ladies event so be it. I just hope they get the butts kicked.

So point being, if ladies events get more ladies interested in poker then great! The more women that play the more likely we are to finally start winning some major events. Lady's events are a great way for ladies to start playing in live tournaments without being as intimidated as they might be in an open event and hopefully after playing a few lady's events they will progress to the open events and start kicking some mens butts.

Women are starting to really become a major factor in the poker world. This year so far women have made a great showing. Liv Boree won the EPT San Remo event and Vanessa Selbst won the Mohegan Sun NAPT event. Annette Orberstad has already won the WSOPE and won event 4 in the Aussie Millions this year. Hopefully this will be the year that a woman at least final tables the WSOP. Let's keep our fingers crossed and hopefully it won't be Annie Duke.

Disclaimer: For the most part I wouldn't consider myself a feminist, at least not in the way most people think of feminist. I don't mind if men open doors for me or pull out my chair, I appreciate it actually. I like old fashion manners and I don't think it makes me weak in anyway. I just think women can do whatever they want and they should be treated fairly.

P.S. One more thing - guys who try to make people think they are girls when playing online because they think it makes them look fishier really tick me off. Any ladies who try to hide the fact that they are ladies bugs me too. Be proud you are woman poker player and make sure the guys know they've had their butts kicked by girl!

It's always funny when I take 3/4 of some guys stack and two or three players say things like "good bet dude", "nice hand buddy"! I promptly let them know I'm not a dude or a buddy. My username is DiamondDixie - quite feminine sounding I would think but guys just hate to think a female just outplayed them.

Edit: Just watched the video of Shaun's reason and apology for playing in the lady's event and while I think him playing and playing in drag was in poor taste I have to admit that had I been sitting at the table with him I might have died laughing. I tend to agree with some of his reasoning and appreciate the fact that he was planning on donating some of his winnings to a woman's charity.

Women in poker...

What's with photo ads like this??? Who does this entice???

With the ladies WSOP event just having finished, there are several posts on various forums about ladies events and men playing in ladies events etc., so I decided this would be the subject of my next blog.

Okay, I don't play in women's events, I don't even particularly like playing with women in general so that said, why (all generalizations but)....

• Women suck at poker (this would be good as far as beating them but...).
• Women are way too nice and drive me nuts saying "nice hand", "good game" etc. (not that a little politeness is a bad thing but women go way overboard with it).
• Women talk too much at the poker table, especially about how their aces and kings always get cracked.
• Women want to chop in tournaments way too early and way too often and the part of this that kills me is when someone bust on the bubble and the women want to each chip in from their winnings to cover the bubble girl's buy in. You bust on the bubble you don't deserve your buy in back, if you can't afford the buy in don't play.

Now I don't believe for one single minute that women are not as capable as men of being good and even great poker players (many women are proving it) . It's just that unfortunately most of them never get close. Why do I believe this is so....

Women who want to play in women only events should be free to do so but I wish more women felt comfortable playing in open events. There is nothing about women that makes them bad except their attitudes and the age old things that have been drummed into their heads and this kind of crap is why women, in general, aren't as good as men at poker. They have been taught all of their lives to take a back seat to men and don't let them know how smart they are. They've been taught to sit back and look pretty. They've been taught that being nice and well thought of is more important that winning - well f#%k that crap I want to win, you men don't like being beaten by a woman, well too bad!

I recently read another person's blog about women's poker events and I totally agree with what is said. I have no problem with groups like the High Heels Poker Tour and LIPS but, like it says in the linked blog, I believe women in poker would be better served if these groups went about getting women interested in poker in a different way. I like the idea of picking an open event and encouraging as many women as possible to turn out to play in that event instead of having a separate ladies event thus keeping up the segregation of women in poker. That said if some women prefer to play in a gender specific event then they should be able to.

Nothing recently made me any madder than the scheduling of the ladies tournament during the main event at one WSOP satellite event back in the fall. What kind of message does this send out? Okay we've scheduled and event for you little ladies to play in while your husbands and boyfriends, the 'real' poker players, play in the main event, give me a break!

Ladies put aside what you've been taught and get out there and play with the big boys. Big boys times are changing get used to it!

May's end and climb up from the pit of despair...

Well April showers didn't bring May flowers so that has to mean that the flowers in my fields are all late bloomers and June will be a banner month so I'm really excited. That's just how you have to look at it in poker.

My volume was better but I still had a loosing month overall but I will not despair. I did pretty well meeting my goals and that's half the battle. I know that if I play solid poker, study, review my play and put in the volume I will come out a winner in long run.

In the long run is a phrase often heard regarding poker. Why is that, you may ask? It is because poker is about volume and end results. Two months of running somewhat bad are nothing in the grand scheme of things, after all that was only over 300 hands each month and only 600 total and that is nothing in the poker world.

Did I see improvements in game? Absolutely! I made less stupid mistakes and I almost never tilted. I posted only two times in the bad beat section on the PokerVT forum and one of those was just because the hand was pretty hilarious. My AK 10bb shove from MP1 actually got called by a big stack moron in the CO with 5 7 offsuit and he won the hand with a pair of 5s. I really actually laughed when this one happened. The best thing is this fish thinks that was a good play and I hope I'm his opponent when he does it again.

As for May goals here are the results:

Play 150 45 man $3.25s and win the prop bet - hit 100 and took 2nd place in the prop bet
Play 200 other games for 350 total - complete
maintain a positive ROI - finished at 18% for all games and 7% for sngs
review more hands - really need to work on this one
study more - ditto still need to do more
maintain silver star status - already completed
get better at 4 tabling - mastered 4 tabling and about ready to move up to 6

As for June goals here they are:

Play 500 games - mostly on Stars with a few on FTP
Maintain a positive ROI
Pick a game and stick with it
Stop making stupid mistakes
Finally purchase sng wizard and use it (that's right I don't currently have it and it shows IMO)
Successfully play 8 tables per session by the end of June
Most importantly RUN BETTER or PLAY BETTER - whichever one is causing the problems
Stay away from the cash tables

Well onward and upward and NEVER SAY DIE!!!