Allow me to share with you the thoughts I had today when I was at work….
Women can’t play Chess to save there lives. OK, maybe that’s a bit unfair. I’m sure there are women about that could completely trash me at Chess. When you look at the world rankings, you have to scroll some way down the list before you find the first female player. We all know the reasons why this is, so I won’t go into it.
Now compare that with Poker. I still think that men are, on the whole, better at Poker than women are, but you do often see women on the final table of Poker tournaments, and there is no affirmative action in Poker tournaments. When a woman has ended up on the final table of a Poker tournament, she has earned her place there. There is obviously something about Poker that advantages women. And fair play to them. Poker is a tough game and fair play to the women that can play on level terms with the men. Credit where credits due.
However, I’m not writing this post to big up women for being able to play Poker. I’m going somewhere with this. Why are women able to play on a level playing field with men when playing Poker when they are utterly hopeless at every other game/sport viz a viz men? What is it about Poker that women utilize to their benefit that other games/sports don’t have? As far as I am concerned there are two dimensions to Poker: card play and personality play. Firstly, the card play aspect. Although the specific logical structure of the game is fairly unique amongst card games, it is not fundamentally different. As long as you can calculate probabilities fairly accurately, you’ve pretty much got it. The other aspect to Poker – the personality play – is also to be found in other games, but is not in any other game so completely fundamental as it is in Poker.
Reading your opponent is absolutely crucial to the game. To quote the perennial Poker adage ‘You don’t play the cards, you play your opponent’. I want to get even more specific than this. A good Poker player will know how to represent value. A good Poker player will often win with a poor hand because he represented it as a strong hand. I just want to say that sentence again with a little extra information added on.
A good Poker player will often win with a poor hand because he represented it as a strong hand knowing that his opponent would believe him.
This is now really getting to the heart of the issue. Why have women engineered such a comfortable position for themselves in society when they are less competent than men, less intelligent that men, weaker than men? It may not be the only reason, but it is certainly a principle reason. Women have so much power, because they intuitively know how to represent value. They know how to represent value, and men believe them! Men have the stronger hand, but we fold all to often when women raise.
They do say that Poker is a life game. I think men are inclined to believe that life is all about the cards they have in front of them when dealing with women, and women know a little more about representing value.
If you want to represent the game of life as a game of poker, you have a table with a roughly equal amount of men and women sat around it. The men are studying their individual hands and the women are studying their hands as well as the men. If you look carefully, every now and again you will see one of the women scratch her ear or stroke her chin or cough. Maybe when this happens one of the other women will raise the pot!
If you keep losing at a game, then it’s time to raise your game! We do, ultimately, have the bast hands!
Just a thought.
RisingSun 4 years, 4 months ago.
