An Ode to the Game of Poker
The world of poker is a magnet to money-loving macho-men. To get rich fast while feeling highly intelligent for having the ability to bullshit your way through a game is incredibly attractive to those who want to flex their toxic masculinity. It “takes balls” to risk losing massive amounts of money while showing no emotion, and bluffing your way to riches. Poker is essentially a cash-driven Big Dick Energy competition, with only 5% of the professional playing pool being made up of women. Having said that, as a woman who’s critical of capitalism, I love the game.
According to the founder of the women’s Poker League of Nations, the biggest obstacles to women in the poker world are: “having the money to play and the confidence in their ability to win.” Next to these, the atmosphere being hostile for women turns out to be a minor issue. It’s not about being disrespected by dudes at the table, but about having the confidence and the material means to occupy this space. And this is the biggest feminist lesson poker has taught me.
Last year, major drama broke out in the poker world involving a beautiful and wealthy woman – Robbi Jade Lew. In short, she played against a dude and won. That sounds simple enough. But no, the dude couldn’t believe the hand she won with, the now notorious J4. He was convinced that she cheated, because, indeed, she went in big with a terrible hand – how did she know she was gonna win if she wasn’t somehow cheating?
Speculations took over Poker Twitter, and it was fantastic to watch. Did she misread her hand? Was she wearing a vibrating device in her skin-tight pants? Was she colluding with someone else? Why did a random casino employee steal chips from her, and she chose not to press charges? She literally took a lie-detector test, and supporters of the dude still didn’t believe she didn’t cheat. Meanwhile, Robbi supporters shared several other, even more absurd and risky, poker hands from dudes who never got accused of cheating (some of them featuring an actual J4 hand). Not to mention the jewel of this era, Caitlin Comeskey and her impressions of the poker players.
Either way, the damage was done. Right after the unforgettable play, the losing player asked another man to summon Robbi to a dark corridor, away from the cameras, demanded his money back, and she gave it to him. She returned over 100 thousand dollars.
When the story broke, she said in an interview with Joey Ingram that reporters were calling her asking for a feminist reading of the debacle, but she refused. And her reasoning truly impressed me. In so many words, she said she couldn’t speculate on whether this dude would have done this to another man. She could only say that another man there would probably never have felt intimidated to the point of giving the money back. It was because of how she was socialized as a woman that she felt the need to “get back into his good graces”. In other words, she couldn’t say the men were behaving like men, but she could say she behaved like a woman and it was regretful.
One of the arguments in her favor was that she wouldn’t cheat because she doesn’t need the money. Interestingly, that is because her husband is very rich, and because she has that ‘classic plastic LA look’, meaning, she has modified her body in a way that she could be making a lot more money doing other things that are less risky and time-consuming than poker. This begs the question, how are women building and utilizing wealth? And how does narrow access to wealth outside the realm of the cult of the body affect women’s material confidence?
My interest in poker has for years been frowned upon by leftists and anti-capitalists in squats and social justice movements. It’s as if by liking this game, I subscribe to the worst aspects of capitalism – making money at the expense of others, without actually working, and to the detriment of the collective well-being. Poker can certainly be that in some cases. But it can also be other things. Money is at play because it’s the one thing of value these days that brings high stakes to the table, and learning to deal with high-stake decisions can be empowering in other aspects of life, especially as a woman.
Women are socialized to think we must be taken care of, as opposed to ‘go big or go home’. We are socialized into thinking we need to care for and nurture others, usually men, who are the real risk-takers big-decision-makers by trade. When we step out of this social expectation by taking big risks and going big, we are judged more harshly, our failures stick out while our wins are seen with suspicion. But just as in life, although there are no guarantees, we could very well win big.
Wanting to win big doesn’t necessarily mean an endorsement of capitalist exploitation. Just as proper remuneration for labor and accessing basic material needs (like food and shelter) don’t mean obsession with money. It just happens that money is, now, the only way to access these basic needs, and enjoying poker doesn’t mean you don’t care about these needs being structurally met for everyone.
Poker is not about changing the world, and it doesn’t have to be. It’s about conditioning ourselves. If it’s unhealthy, it’s unhealthy just like nearly everything else has the potential to be. While some of poker’s lessons ought to be unlearned by some dudes, these same lessons may very well be a fantastic asset to a lot of women out there. If not, it’s still hilarious to watch the brilliant women of poker raising a ruckus in a male dominated field. And the consensus achieved on Poker Twitter about Robbi’s alleged cheating scandal is that if a movie is made about this, she will be played by Angelina Jolie, and the loser will be played by the guy who does Joey in Friends.
Mirna Wabi-Sabi
Mirna is a Brazilian writer, site editor at Gods and Radicals and founder of Plataforma9. She is the author of the book Anarcho-transcreation and producer of several other titles under the P9 press.