David Woods of PokerPlayer Criticizes Wheeler’s Latest Remarks

Responding to UKIP Treasurer Stuart Wheeler’s recent remark that women’s failure to beat men at games such as poker, bridge, and chess is because of their lack of competitiveness, David Woods of PokerPlayer magazine says that it is “nonsense.”

In his article on The Telegraph, David Woods says that, while poker is indeed a game dominated by men, this hardly suggests that women are not competitive enough or unable to beat men at poker. Pointing out that only 4.7 percent of the player field at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) 2013 Main Event was female, he said that the reason games such as chess, bridge, and poker are male-dominated may be historical, cultural, and so on, but definitely not lack of competitiveness on the part of women.

Speaking about his experience at poker tournaments, he said that the live poker world is hardly friendly toward new poker players, male or female. Referring to Stuart Wheeler’s suggestion that women are not good poker players because of their lack of competitiveness and his subsequent suggestion that this is the reason most of them do not make it to company board rooms, he said that this argument does not hold water.

Admitting that there may be many reasons poker is male dominated, he said that gender hardly matters in poker and then listed out several successful female poker players. UK pro Victoria Coren won her largest pot of $500k playing the London leg of the 2006 European Poker Tournament (EPT). In the course of her poker career, she has won more than $1.7 million.

Vanessa Selbst, who has been playing poker for more than six years, won more than $7 million playing aggressive poker. She is the winner of two WSOP bracelets, and the PokerPlayer magazine places her in the list of the world’s ten top poker players. Jennifer Harman is another prominent poker player who defeated Andy Beale, a millionaire poker player who hails from Texas, and won millions of dollars. The number of female poker players can hardly be called exceptions to the rule; besides, there are plenty of female bridge and chess players too. Woods argued that the fact that women chess, bridge, and poker players are in the minority does not prove that they lack competitiveness.

Woods then proceeded to answer the question of what makes one a successful poker player. According to him, successful poker players require a certain level of aggressiveness along with patience, logical thinking, ability to read poker tells, and stay level headed throughout the game. One often sees in poker the alpha male who makes a fool of himself at the table because of his ego issues.

Woods also said that UKIP’s use of the poker example as “an excuse to dismiss women” during the same month it faced accusations of being sexist “is nonsense, unfortunate, and getting a little embarrassing.” Recalling UKIP’s Suzanne Evans’ statement urging the public not to consider daft jokes to be sexist remarks, he said that the UKIP has gone too far this time.

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