The Gender Divide

Poker has always been a male-dominated industry, but it would be illogical to let it continue this way. Why would any self-respecting business exclude 50% of the world's population from its market? However, it's easy to see why the various drives to attract women to poker so far have had such a limited amount of success. They have failed because they're missing the point: as there are so many men playing poker, women feel intimidated.

For example, I regularly ask my girlfriend if she wants to join me when I'm going to play a tournament at the casino. She declines, and says that she doesn't know how to play poker. I always retort that when I started, I didn't know how to play poker either, but that I went along anyway and soon learned. Her next response is often something along the lines of: 'Oh yeah, but it's only guys so of course it was easier for you. It's not going to be fun. They're going to think I'm an idiot.'

What we need to create is a friendly environment for women where they can learn to play poker along with their friends, co-workers, and other females in general, without men trying to play macho poker. With this idea in mind, I was inspired to take a completely new course of action. It's a business model companies like Ann Summers have been using for many years and it always seems to work magically.

It works because women are not brazen enough to go into adult shops and buy items. I won't go into details at this point in time, but I will emphasise that the key is a safe atmosphere where women can learn how to play poker enjoyably, with no money or risk involved. They can then take the next step and start to play both online and live with confidence.

AN INCLUSIVE INDUSTRY

Some people suggest the reason there are less women in poker is that they do not possess the aggression that is so fundamental to poker. But this is not true - just look at players like Annette Obrestad, Maria Ho and many other female poker stars. If you combine their aggression with all their other natural qualities, such as intuition and patience, they have an advantage against men. Women can be fantastic players, but this fact hasn't been properly explored either by women generally or by the
poker industry.

To say I dislike ladies-only events is a strong statement, but if you think about it, it's a rather strange phenomena. Women-only  tournaments are fun to watch and possibly make for good TV, and it is fun for women to play with only women. The problem is that they come across like a novelty, which is why you have certain guys trying to play and behaving badly by entering these tournaments.

There's nothing wrong with female tournaments, but then you need to have male-only tournaments, and other tournaments which are only for certain groups of people, and this makes no sense whatsoever. So I really don't see the need for them, or other segregated tournaments. I'd much rather have the female players come in and just be poker players. Why even care if they are female or male? They're players, like everybody else.

INCREASING VOLUME

In the near future, I'm going to work very hard towards the goal of increasing the number of female players. I'm in the midst of devising a marketing plan with a grassroots approach which will appeal to female players. In starting to play, they will attract others and before you know it female players will be flooding in. Right now, women make up maybe 5% of our customers. If we could increase that to even 15%, then we would see a drastic increase in players overall, which would benefit Bet24.com and the wider poker market.

I don't think that poker sites have closed their doors to women; I just think they have gone about attracting them the wrong way, because they have missed or skipped a few steps. They have tried to attract women with TV commercials and female tournaments, but as long as you have resistance from women who think that it is a man's game, then these won't help. You need to change that view, and make them realise it's not a man's game - it's simply a game. It is a fantastic and fun game, and this is the message that needs to be properly promoted.