Ante Up, Ladies

Dark, smoke-filled rooms and tough guys slouching around a table, playing for keeps--that's our image of poker from old movies. But in the past few years, as poker mania has taken hold of the nation--fueled by televised tournaments, celebrity players and a proliferation of online poker sites--the game's macho image has undergone a makeover. At card tables both real and virtual across the country, women who didn't know a flush from a full house a year ago are pushing in chips and slapping down cards faster than you can say Texas Hold 'Em. Like many men, female players are often drawn in by moneymaking dreams (as in Chris Moneymaker, the unknown online player who inspired many a poker habit by capturing the $2.5 million World Series of Poker prize in 2003). But for women, there's the added appeal of having a great time while smashing through a gender barrier. "When you beat guys, it's a rush," says Gloria Tsang, 32, a Los Angeles nurse who took up poker three years ago. "I can play with these boys. I can hang with them."

Firm statistics on who's playing poker are hard to find, but virtually all the online sites report a big jump in female players. At EmpirePoker.com women have gone from 3% of players three years ago to 20% today. InterPoker.com reports that 10% of players a year ago were women. Today that number is at least 25%. "Women are the fastest-growing demographic of new players," says Maryann Morrison, publisher of the fledgling Woman Poker Player magazine and founder of the Women's Poker Club, a women-only site. Morrison estimates that about 35% of online players are now female, in part because of the rapid rise of all-female sites. Testifying to that hot new market are a slew of guidebooks by women for women. Among them: Annie Duke's How I Raised, Folded, Bluffed, Flirted, Cursed, and Won Millions; Cat Hulbert's Outplaying the Boys; and Toby Leah Bochan's The Badass Girl's Guide to Poker--all published this year.

Eileen Yee, 33, is typical of the newly minted female player. An accountant from Ferndale, Mich., she was riveted to ESPN last year during the World Series of Poker. "What grabbed me," she says, "was the excitement and drama." Afterward, she continued to watch televised poker for hours at a time, bought a book on strategy and refined her game online and at live tables. Residing in a state where gaming outside a casino is illegal, she finds it hard as a woman to pick up live games as often as she would like. At her computer, she can ante up anytime and enjoys playing without the locker-room humor she has endured when eye to eye with opponents.

It's a preference shared by many women. A 2005 survey commissioned by the World Poker Exchange found that women are six times as likely as men to prefer wagering in cyberspace--away from the testosterone-fueled aggressiveness often aimed at women in casinos. Also, since so many women are newcomers, they find online teaching tools and free or low-stakes games appealing. At Bodog.com for example, new players automatically get a hefty $1,000 in play money and 50 poker points toward tournaments. "Online, you can get experience for a dollar," says World Series of Poker champion Duke. "When I started, I had to risk $100 a game."