Does Gender Affect Your Play Online?

[bolgenmod]

I don't really know about online, since my experience there is VERY limited, but in B&M play, I've seen an interesting extension of not believing a woman could have a good hand. More than once, I've played at a table with a very attractive, but not really young (more 30ish than 20ish), woman who was friendly but serious.

I saw more than a few hands when the guys at the table didn't raise her bet and actually said, "I know I have you beat"! Now the woman did play well and wasn't hurting for chips, but 2/3 of the time, the man did have her beat. NO WAY would these players have failed to raise a man they thought they beat -- I saw them do that too. They lost a bet they shouldn't have because she was a good-looking nice woman. And she saved bet she should have lost if she were a man.

Even worse (for the other guys, at least) is what happened when this same woman did have the best hand. (By the way, this was small limit, 5-10, somewhat loose, but not maniacal.) But they didn't believe her, despite her playing her hand strong. First, she raised before the flop from UTG+1. (I was in MP, saw crap that I wouldn't call the blind with, much less a raise, and mucked, so I was a very interested spectator, not a participant.) Of course, 4 guys call her raise. Raise by UTG+1? UTG+1 is a girl? CALL! (2-3 players in a hand was more typical of this table, especially with a preflop raise.)

Well, not only do these guys call her raise, but she proceeds to check-raise them TWICE: on the flop and on the turn. Risky, but also brilliant, I thought. She seemed to know that these guys just didn't give her credit for a hand, and she did get the perfect flop and turn...but still. You be the judge.

The flop came AQx rainbow. She was second to act after the BB. He checked, she checked, the next player checked, and then there was a bet. Call, call by the BB, and she raises. Cold-call of 2 bets by the next player, and the other 3 call the raise. I thought, I bet she has an A -- she checked to make the other players think that she had a raising hand, but something that was scared of an AQ flop, like pocket Js. Nice. (Easy to admire when it's not your money!)

The turn paired the Q with a total rainbow, no straight board. Again BB checks, she checks, another check and again the flop bettor bets. There are 2 callers, one fold (the BB), and she raises again! Again a cold call of 2 bets and the call of the raise by the other 2!!

What are these guys thinking??? Either she's the stupidest player ever (which they must know she isn't since she hasn't been playing stupid for the last 2 or more hours), or she has a monster. AK or AQ are probably the weakest hands she would raise preflop UTG+1 and checkraise the flop. (Other plausible preflop raising hands like Jacks might not checkraise the flop and certainly wouldn't checkraise the turn.) To raise preflop, checkraise the flop, and THEN checkraise the turn spells monster to me. Again, either she's an idiot, or she has pocket aces, pocket queens, or AQ. AK might checkraise the flop, but be scared of trip queens on the turn. So after the second checkraise, I was pretty sure she must have pocket aces or queens -- I thought the turn check was meant to suggest that she was scared of trip queens when the queen paired on the turn, but when the others bet, she would whack them with the best full house or quad queens.

As indeed she did. She bet out on the river (a blank) and was incredibly called by 2 of the 3 remaining players. (I guess she thought she couldn't get a checkraise hat-trick!) She didn't have the stone cold nuts (quad queens) but did have the second nuts, aces full. I suppose the other two queens might have been in the quickly mucked hands of the others.

It was ridiculous. Oh, they groaned, and said, "I can't believe you check-raised twice -- nobody does that!". And she just smiled and shrugged and raked in a very nice pot.

And then, to top it off, the men still soft-played her after this hand in which a combination of their delusion and her killer instinct earned her a monster pot, at least twice as big as it might have been if the guys would have taken her seriously. Is it because she was a woman? That's the only explanation I can think of...

By the way, at one point another woman was at the same table. She was (not to be rude) very unattractive and pretty standoffish: she didn't chat with the other players at all. Although she played about the same caliber game as the attractive and more affable woman, the male players did give her credit for good hands when she bet and raised. If she checkraised them, they had the goods or they got out.

I guess the point is that it's not just gender, but also attractiveness and manner. Nice looking women who are pleasant seem to get played softer. And even if they play their hands in a straight-forwardly aggressive way, guys don't believe that they could have what they're representing.

(In case anyone wants to know, I tried to play the same against both women as against everyone else. Maybe not: maybe I was just lucky that in the big check-raise pot I folded before the flop and thus could see that this woman was seriously good?)

And another thing: I too wonder what the women think. And I reverse the question: do women play softer against better looking and nicer men? I've never seen it, but what do I know?

[goofball]

i've seem men give chips back to the woman they just won a pot from. seriously, I like playing at the table with girls as much as the next guy. Doesn't mean I won't play them ashard as anyone else.

[disjunction]

Gender doesn't affect me at all.

But babies -- has anybody noticed that babies are often LAG? They run me over. When they bluff I believe them -- after all, why would a baby lie?

[BigBaitsim (milo)]

I try to pay little attention to gender, although there are certain heuristics one uses to size up a player immediately. The key is to accomodate, that is, change your judgments based on new info. Yes, you can make certain assumptions about a woman sitting with her husband, as opposed to a waitress playing with her tips, as opposed to a casino regular who handles her chips like a dealer. That having been said, you MUST guard against making assumptions, then sticking to them. You must adapt to new info, or you will lose. My wife handles her chips poorly, and rarely plays in casinos (and never online). She has a great deal of poker knowledge however, and has no trouble winning at SS games because the other players happily pay her off, having not noticed that she understands the nuances of the game fairly will, even if she can't properly count out her bets.

[tdarko]

i am female on every account of mine, i think there is some validity in getting paid off with a female handle instead of male.

[IShark]

In case you guys haven't noticed women play much tigher and generally more conservatively than men. Not to say you can push them off a good hand, but they are good and wise limit players. They also seem to be playing more to make money than to impress others with their aggression.

No-limit is a different story, there are very few good female no-limit players.

[SteveM]

Interesting thread.

After thinking that I'd noticed people playing differently against females, I adopted a "young female" screen name. My win rate for this relatively short time was about the same, but one thing that was really obvious was how often I'd get congratulated for my winning hands (even ones like top pair). When I was playing as a guy, that almost never happened unless I had a monster. I also noticed (in low buy-in tourneys) that my female persona would receive unsolicited advice while my male one did not. Anyone else notice this?

[Pocket Trips]

I read somewhere that many pro players have adopted feminine sounding online names because people do not take them seriously

[wickedgoodtrader]

I used to play single tables all the time on party and I would sit in the 8 seat I believe it was. The one with the chic in the yellow with big boobs. My name was "touchempleez" i dunno if it got me more action but I switched the name because I figured people would be more apt to remember that name and therefore learn my style quicker.

[disjunction]

They also cross-dress in the live games.