Zupkos life

The other day on WPC there was a post about an episode of ER in which they portrayed a woman poker player as a loser and degenerate who ended up so far in debt she killed herself so her children could have the insurance money.

First, how dare they portray women who play poker in this manner?! This is not who the majority of us are. Most of us have families, jobs, careers. We are stay at home moms, college students, grandmothers, daughters and everything in between. We come from different countries. And we bond over a simple game. That is who the real women of poker are. We are successful women (regardless of what we do for a living) who manage our time and our money to be able to have it all. Most of us live with in our means so we can play poker take care of our families and ourselves just as any woman with a hobby or interests does. I, personally, probably spend less money per month on poker than my friend does on her gardening hobby.

Second, women did not have it easy getting into poker. It has always been a male dominated game and it took a long time for us to be accepted by the poker community. We are still struggling to stay in it and play with out sexist remarks, rude comments and remarks about how we play. I resent the hell out of the media and television giving us one more hurdle to conquer just to play poker.

Third, I see no one trying to show the good that poker can bring for women. Not just at the tables and not just monetary. I have seen women who learned to play poker just to play and got much more out of it than just poker skills. They gained confidence in themselves. They gained the ability to see themselves from a different view point. Poker requires reading people and to do that you have to look at yourself first. New players to the game and seasoned professionals spend much time learning as much about themselves as they do about the other players. It is part of the game.

Fourth, there is a social aspect to poker that is evident in very few places other than a poker table. I have many friends that do not play poker. We have normal friendships in which we spend time together, we support eachother and we have children, jobs, and personalities in common. I find the same with the women I have met online and in person playing poker. In the years I have been involved in poker I have met many women who dont have the outside support of family and friends that I do. These women found those same things in forums and in poker rooms all over the world. How can any one dare say that we close ourselves off from the rest of the world........in my opinion we open ourselves up.

If it is money and going broke that the media is worried about.....portraying women poker players this way is not the answer. Read any poker magazine, book etc... and there is always at least one section about managing money and playing with in your means. There is not one professional player that I have met or interviewed that didn't advocate staying with in what you can afford to play with.

Don't tell me what is good for me in a TV show or how poker is sure to bring me to at the very minimum financial ruin. It is not accurate and it just pisses me off. I am an intellegent woman; most women who play are. There is some type of intellegence and skill necessary to play poker.

Don't call my home in the pretense of getting a real picture of what women in poker are really like and then ask me whether or not I spend time with my kids or play poker all day. Or whether I have taken out second, third mortgages on my home to play poker. (This has not happened to me but it has happened to others that I know).

Try looking at the other side of poker. For me poker has been and continues to be a series of great experiences. I have been writing since I was a kid. I am now writing for a magazine, been published in a book, have a blog and write and research daily for WPC. This is due to poker. Many women's careers have skyrocketed due to the opportunities that poker created for them. So many have started small businesses, work with online casinos and land based casinos. Hell, the VP of the Wold Poker Tour is a woman. She came from a sucessful business background but poker gave her the opportunity to be more and get more out of her career and her life. Another woman made a decent living making jewelry, she has now gone from small online sales to creating and manufacturing her jewelry and selling to a huge market.

My final comment.......yes, there are some women (and men) who let poker take over their lives but it is not necessarily about poker itself. If not poker it would have been something else. An over abundance of ANYTHING is not good for you.