Anxiety is an asset that lingers in my personal branding kit. As a 45-year-old twice-divorced diabetic who doesn’t own a home and can’t have children, my inner voice is constantly suggesting I am not enough. Maybe it was my competitive upbringing where the family motto of “play to win, don’t have fun” was only partially a joke.
Luckily, I found psychological resilience in an unexpected place: the poker table. Amid shuffling cards and faint whiffs of cigarette smoke, I learned to be in conversation with my inner voice, rather than fighting it.
Like much of my corporate career in fratty boardrooms marketing alcohol and cannabis, the game is heavily male-dominated, with less than 10% of global players identifying as female. Although in casinos I’m surrounded by women — masseurs, dealers and cocktail waitresses — they are catering to men rather than ante’ing up against them.
When I first began playing poker four years ago, it only heightened my nerves. My inner narrator, always abundant with self-doubt, suddenly gained even more fodder. The usual, What if I marry the wrong man again? suddenly competed with, Should I raise or call? Did that card help him or me? Is it better to fold? Am I allowed to take up space in this room?
Despite my nerves, I had something to prove to the young girl inside me who was keenly aware there wasn’t a place for her at every table. When I was growing up, my dad and brothers ante’d up at our kitchen table for Texas Hold Em, while I was relegated to refilling snack bowls and changing the channel of sporting events simulcasted in the background. When life did give me a seat, I was outnumbered — a 30-something at a company offsite, one of 13 women out of 110 global marketers.
In both poker rooms and the world over, women are increasingly forced to operate in high-stakes spaces. Similar to the misogyny society accepted in the ’90s where girls weren’t asked to play cards, my social feed has been littered with the noise of “trad wife” rhetoric and playful self-deprecating #girlmath jokes. Poker felt like a space I needed to enter to prove I’m not just here to churn butter and joke about my Sephora haul.
A few years ago, my Chicago women’s networking group hosted a poker night with professional dealers and instruction — after the first few rounds of Texas Hold ’Em, I was hooked. And once I learned the rules, proving myself a worthy competitor came second to the value of poker’s clear-eyed logic. It was the counter-narrative I needed to better understand how to move through the world.
Amid the silent calculus of probabilities, I discovered an arena where agency was paramount and my path was chosen, not prescribed. I made decisions on when to call, fold, bluff, raise or leave, all while inadvertently taking a master class in reading others. The game forces a series of decisions made under pressure in real time, and while my heart raced at the highs and sank during the low points, I swelled with pride knowing I allowed myself to take up space in a world not built to accommodate me. My instincts and confidence took over and it was as if I didn’t have time to be anxious.
Poker puts into focus the same gender dynamics that can create anxiety for women in a patriarchal society, says Jessica Calarco, a sociologist, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and author of ”Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net.” “You’re expected to read the room, stay composed, and manage risk — much like women do every day in a world that asks them to carry everything without appearing to struggle,” she tells me.
I held it together and realized that not only was this guy uncomfortable with my presence, he certainly didn’t have the gall to lose to the only girl at the table.
The unspoken expectations Calarco describes were constantly at play in my own poker journey. I once played at a table at Bellagio in Las Vegas with my boyfriend as the only woman at the table. I was frantically trying to memorize the denominations of chips in front of me while a greasy-haired guy in a Nirvana T-shirt asked my boyfriend if he was scared I’d lose all his money.
In another session, a player threw his fist in the air and shouted in delight when I didn’t make my flush and he won. At these tables, I’m still expected to perform at the highest level. But that’s fine. I don’t want or need special rules to accommodate my gender.
Calarco points out that poker, unlike other games, is both highly self-serving and social at the same time, opening a distinct opportunity for women. She referenced the fact that while poker is a zero-sum game — meaning every chip I win is one lost from another player — it is also intrinsically social. Every decision I make is shaped by the shifting behaviors of seven other players where each bet, facial tic and pause are signals in a constantly evolving conversation.
Calarco explains this can be used to my advantage. “Women are taught from an early age to anticipate other people’s needs — a skill that can actually make them great poker players. If you treat the game as deeply social, that emotional awareness becomes a strategic edge.” In that light, the mental gymnastics feel less like cognitive labor and more like what I’ve been taught to do my whole life. Her insights make my sweaty palms and anxious thoughts more manageable when I prop my elbows on the felt of the card table.
I tested her theory that reading people was a distinct female advantage earlier this year at a local casino. I played against a Texas tourist who singled me out. His face wore a seemingly constant grin to the other men in the room until he looked at me while I was contemplating my next move — his eyes bulged in a forced stoic stare that almost made me laugh.
I held it together and realized that not only was this guy uncomfortable with my presence, he certainly didn’t have the gall to lose to the only girl at the table. I let him overplay his kings as I held an inferior starting hand and made a straight. He couldn’t hold back his anger when he hoofed towards the cashier.
“We don’t leave many spaces open for women to play with money and authority. Poker offers women a rare space to experiment with power,” Calarco tells me. And I agree.
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Learning to confidently take up space in a world where the odds were inherently against me flipped the childhood mantra — I’m playing to win and having fun — while the ultimate prize is self-possession (along with scooping chips from the center of the table, of course). On the felt, every decision is a quiet act of defiance where I’ve learned to trust my instincts as the world continues to raise the ante for women.