Women Poker Players

How More And More Women Are Playing Poker... And Winning!

Look out, lads! The women are coming in droves to the poker table! It used to be the case that if women played cards at all they went to whist drives.

In very upmarket homes a rubber of bridge might have been the social order at the dinner party. Not now, chaps. Channel Five newsreader Fiona Foster has taken upi poker along with her husband. Tom Cruise's former wife, Mimi Rogers, is a dedicated poker player, as is TV personality Claudia Winkleman. Perhaps the most interesting recruit of all is TV Soccer AM's brainy blonde Helen Chamberlain. Helen is fast becoming a poker standard bearer for the new army of female online poker players.

"I recently turfed tournament favourite Ram Vaswani out of the SKY Poker Million competition," chirps a confident Miss Chamberlain.

And how did you manage that little miracle, Helen? Share your tips with Daily Star readers right this minute:

"It was a bullying tactic. It's one thing being a bully but when I'm being bullied, I fold unless I think I've got a hand. That's how I beat Ron Vaswani. He went all-in and we already had the flop and there was nothing. I had a pair and he obviously went all-in to try and scare me off. When the flop came in, it was a 9 high-flop."

Nice pair, Helen!

Even more gobsmacking is the meteoric rise to the top levels of the game of the now legendary Annie "The Duchess" Duke. Annie rose to fame as Ben Affleck's private coach but has long been a seriously respected poker heavyweight, held in high regard by the likes of Johnny "Orient Express" Chan and Howard "The Professor" Lederer (who happens to be Annie's brother). Annie has beaten both Chan and her brother, along with World Series of Poker double champs Doyle Brunson and Greg Raymer. Last Septemper she won a cool $2,000,000 in the World Poker Tournament of Champions in which she unseated a handful of the most potent poker players on Earth. She even concussed Phil Helmuth into second place.

Any of you ladies out there who are taking up poker and thinking it'll be too difficult to rise to the top and raise a family, think again. Annie is a mother of four and has earned over $6,000,000 in prize money. If there is ever to be a female World Series of Poker champ, it'll probably be the Duchess. In less than a decade, Annie Duke has reached ten finals. In the year 2000, she sat a final table whilst nine months pregnant.

Watch out, guys. The women poker players are coming to get you!

Saturday July 9th 2005 - Poker Column - Women Poker Players

Further Resources:
Top 10 women poker players to fear
Women's Poker Pages
Women's Poker Club: A private social club for women poker players with sponsored women only tournaments, peer mentoring, and poker forum