Annie Duke Issues 10% Challenge to Women Players
Women in the Top 300
20. Vanessa Selbst
164. Vanessa Rousso
175. Annette Obrestad
188. Melanie Weisner
262. Kathy Liebert
According to Team Pokerati local femme fave @LasVegasPokers, today is “girls day” in Las Vegas. Currently running is the Ladies event in the Caesars Palace Kickoff Classic (a $130 NL event) … and then at 7pm is a $105 Pink Ladies $1000 guarantee at the new Tropicana poker room. (Yay?)
Today is also the final table of the Epic Poker League’s 8-handed NL event. No woman has yet to cash in an Epic event, save for maybe in a satellite to a $1,500 pro-am. In fact, only one woman two women entered this week’s $20k Epic event (J.J. Liu and Vanessa Selbst) … and only one woman cracks the Global Poker Index’s ranking of the top 150 players in the world (Vanessa Selbst #20). Not sure what that says about the only poker league run by a woman save for maybe Pink Ladies … but listen to Epic Commish Annie Duke’s keynote address last week at the Women in Poker Hall of Fame ceremony, where she speaks to essentially the Vegas-to-LA power poker sister set — a potentially hostile audience considering Annie’s public opposition to Ladies Events in the past.
CORRECTION: Vanessa Selbst also entered Epic’s 8-handed event; she was one of the first players eliminated. ALSO: LIPS and HHPT are poker tours or leagues run by women.
MORE CORRECTIONS: Vanessa Selbst also cashed in the first Epic Pro-Am, making Epic a little less women-dry than suggested above.
(Sexist to say rrreow?)
1. Annie Duke: Women in Poker Hall of Fame ceremony, 2011 – 15:50
2. Jan Fisher, emcee follow-up – 1:50
[audio: https://pokerati.com/podcast/pokerati-raw/AnnieDuke_wiphof.mp3, https://pokerati.com/podcast/pokerati-raw/JanFisher_wiphof.mp3]
To some extent, just the fact that she got the speaking gig suggests that the feminish poker elite were willing to give her a chance to bury whatever hatchets and re-introduce herself to some of the most active and influential women in poker. In doing so, she bemoaned a gender split for open-tournament participation that has been stuck at about 3 percent since the mid-90s … calls on reaching a new bar of 10 percent … and laid out her vision for an estrogen-wielding flash mob to descend on the open WSOP $1k event the same weekend as the WSOP Ladies Championship … creating an unprecedented gender-balanced open bracelet event, where showing up dressed like a man would presumably be optional.
With that in mind, and 50-50 equality obviously on the horizon, what better way to support the cause with a new T-shirt (from Pokerati’s generic collection) made special just for you:
no credit check!
