Bubbling is a busted fantasy. It's holding your breath and then suddenly having an annoying surplus of air. Last night, I bubbled in the EPT Ladies Monte Carlo € 215 satellite. Two € 3500 packages (€ 1100 entry fee, € 300 ticket to Vanessa Rousso's Big Slick boot camp, 5 nights hotel and € 700 in expenses) were on the line, and 3^rd place was only € 530. It was three-way for over an hour, stakes were high, chat was disabled and the feeling was very raw, like fighting over two lifeboats. I yelped when I escaped elimination with K-9 vs. A-9 and groaned when showdowns kept going the way of the short stack. My boyfriend watched downstairs on the laptop, screaming even louder. Our neighbors must have thought we were in a very high stakes NCAA pool.

And finally I was the short one and out in a flash, caught shoving K-2o from the small blind (with an M of 5). I often visualize the big blind having 2-9o, to make it easier to implement counterintuitive short-stacked strategies. In this case, I was a little off. The big blind had 9s, and shockingly, I didn't hit a king. I still have to apologize to my neighbors as some of my outbursts contradicted the "ladies" event label.

Congrats to the seven who have made it all the way to Monte Carlo: TuffyCat from Oakland, Fatale Popje from Bussum, The Netherlands, Kizoku2008 from Pushkino, Russia Knucklead44 from Great White North, Pechora from Fuengirola, Spain and xivas03 from Prague.

This March Madness of ladies tournaments on pokerstars (two daily super-satellites to the Sunday €215 direct satellites) expanded my original list of reasons that ladies tournaments are awesome but first, let's review what top female poker players have said about separate events.

Against

Annie Duke “Poker is one of the few sports where a woman can compete on a totally equal footing with a man, so I don’t understand why there’s a ladies only tournament.”

Victoria Coren “I don’t think I will play the Ladies’ Event again. A special women’s competition sends out the wrong message, as if we’re admitting we need some kind of help. I want to get better at poker and take my chances in an open field. Of course I want to win a tournament one day, but I don’t want it to be a handicapped one. I want to win a real one.”- From For Richer, For Poorer: A Love Affair With Poker

Tiffany Michelle “If we’re sitting here and talking about equality, and wanting to play with the boys, then obviously it’s not fair to have a ladies only event…I mean, I would be pissed off if they ever did a men-only event, so how in the world can we sit here and do this?” –From cardplayer.com

Mixed

Jennifer Harman The only reason I think ladies tournaments are good is that they get women involved, and they can play and gain experience in a tournament without being too intimidated...(yet) I've always said, you don't have to lift weights to pick up two cards, so poker should be a non-sexist game- From Cardplayer Magazine

Kara Scott I have mixed feelings about Women only tournaments. I can definitely see their place in poker right now and understand their value but at the same time I'm very conscious that being a woman in poker isn't a handicap and shouldn't be treated as one. We don't need to be 'protected' from the men in the game. Then again, with so many different categories of tournaments around (father/son, seniors, celebrity, sports stars), why not have some that are just for women? The standard at these tournaments tends to be very good with some of the best female pros in the world taking part, so there's no truth in the idea that they are somehow 'easier'. UK PokerNews Interview

Annette Obstread  “I haven’t played in any (women’s tournaments). There just haven’t been any – I can’t play in Vegas. I guess one day I will play one in Vegas – I think the field will be really soft. It’s a good chance to win a bracelet! (laughs) It wouldn’t be as good as winning a normal event, but it’s still money, it’s still good"- Poker Player Interview, 2008 and more recently via twitter, "Bah. Busted (The Women's World Open). Hate ladies only tourneys. I just can't figure them out."- March, 2010

For

Kathy Liebert “Ladies events are usually weaker fields”, in response to a question from me about why she called ladies' events "good value."

Vanessa Rousso I don’t often play in ladies events because they usually have a fast structure and I gamble a bit too much in the beginning. But I plan to play the PCA (the Pokerstars Caribbean Adventure, which she ended up winning), which has a great structure so I’m excited about that. Pokercast interview, January 4, 2010

Evelyn Ng “Even though there is no apparent gender bias inherent in poker tournaments, there is no doubt that women-only events have a totally different feel than open events… it was so wonderful that almost 1,200 women came out to play this year’s Ladies Championship (2008). Many of them were playing their first poker tournament, and perhaps, their experiences at the WSOP will be their gateway into open events in the future. For what it’s worth though, I think that the term ‘Women’s Event’ is much more appropriate than ‘Ladies Event,’” From her bodog blog.

Maria Ho “I see the ladies events as a very good platform. Some women don’t feel comfortable playing at the same table as men. They feel more comfortable learning with other women. This just gives them the option and I don’t see a problem with that. It’s great for women, which will only be good for the game. The bad thing is that these tournaments are usually crapshoots. The structure is pretty poor. I’m not sure if they don’t feel the need to create a good structure, since we’re just females.” From a pokerpages interview.

As obvious from the title of this article, I am in the pro camp for a number of reasons:

1. Poker is about Game selection, Not Identity Politics

One of the most important poker skills is game selection, finding spots where you’re plus EV, accounting for the rake and expenses. You could be the second best poker player in the world, but if all you do is play the best poker player in the world, you’ll go broke eventually. As Kathy Liebert said, women’s fields are usually softer especially for equivalent buy-ins (not due to some inherent lack of female poker skill, but due to less experience).

Who would dare tell a man that he shouldn’t play in an event where he had an edge? This line of argument would suggest a male pro who waits desperately for a spot at the table with the drunk businessman is actually admitting his inferiority? That women shouldn’t play in women’s tournaments because it’s degrading strikes me as so anti-poker it’s hard for me to believe that famous poker players espouse this idea. To be fair, some people who are adamantly against these events may be against organizing them, but not against individuals playing in them.

When I first started playing poker, I loved ladies events because it was obvious that I had an edge in them. And some of my poker friends also realized that so they were happy to put me in. If not for those events, I would hardly play live at all, for bankroll reasons.

Remember that many poker spokespeople and professionals are rich and/or sponsored. Others make the majority of their money from cash games. Therefore, they may be more detached from the reality of how difficult it is to profit from poker tourneys and happy to sit back and look at ladies events with philosophical lens. So it makes sense that Kathy Liebert, who is not sponsored and primarily a tournament player was the only famous player I could find making a pragmatic point about value.

2. Camaraderie

At ladies tournaments, players share information about cardrooms, other ladies events and men to watch out for (good and bad!). The last time I played in AC a woman told me about a cheaper hotel she stayed at in the Bahamas to make playing the Ladies PCA affordable. If I'd known, I may have flown to the Bahamas despite not winning a seat. I also met women who had become such good friends from PCA that they were pooling satellite buyins. Men do this kind of thing all the time as it helps make the poker life feasible. Whereas sharing a hotel room with a guy you don't want to sleep with is like ace-jack with a deep stack. You don't want to get involved.

In a 2005 interview Clonie Gowen said: "The guys can all share rooms and cut their expenses. But as a woman... you bear all the costs. I wished there were more female players at that time, so we (could) share expenses."

3. Structures verus Price

  Rousso and Ho criticize women's tournaments for having shallow structures but many of them give decent value and an inexpensive shot at a prestigious title. The Borgata Fall 09 Ladies event cost $260+40, the cheapest event on the tournament schedule. The Ladies World Series of Poker 2009 event was one of just three $1000 events (although there are many more 1K events set for 2010). Higher rolling female pros might prefer $1000+ buy ins and deeper structures but the negative of that is pretty clear: it would result in smaller fields.

4. Balancing the Male to Female Ratio

Pokerstars tv posted an amusing but sad video from EPT Copenhagen about how hard it was to find a single woman in the cardroom.

Copenhagen did not host a ladies event, which partly explains the dearth of females at that event. Once a woman is at a casino for a ladies event, she'll likely play in cash games or sit n gos when she gets knocked out. If she does well, that could mean money pumped into her bankroll for mixed events. In addition to satellites into ladies' events, online poker rooms should consider hosting ladies satellites into mixed events. I'd play :)

Females in the WSOP main event represent less than 5% of the field so the ME would be an ideal candidate for such satellites.

5. Variety

Why would you want to make every poker tournament the same as the last? Variety keeps the media interested and ladies tournaments in particular allow for targeted marketing and advertising campaigns.

6. Learning

I spent the first 20 years of my life mastering chess and in that game, it's best to play consistently strong opponents to challenge yourself. But in poker, experience against various styles and skill levels is an asset. If women play slightly different than men in general, than the experience of playing in ladies' tournaments should give women useful information for mixed events.

Playing in the Monte Carlo EPT satellites gives me the opportunity to play against a core group of players over and over again, which is a great learning experience. At this point I have notes on almost every regular, which challenges me to go beyond the default strategies I often fall back on in massive MTTs.

7. Gender Bender

In many states, men who desire to play in ladies events can simply summon courage and enter. Casinos don't want to embroil themselves in legal issues of what defines a woman, so they don't strictly enforce the Ladies' Only rule. Take the recent cases from Atlantic City, Fall 2009  and Lake Tahoe, November 2009, where men won so-called women's events. Nolan Dalla, Media director of the recently spoke on the Final Table Show, to encourage men to respect the ladies events.

In the last Borgata ladies event I played, in January 2010, there were around six gentlemen in the tournament. They were ceremoniously booed as they were knocked out one by one. So men who want to can go ahead and take the action, but don't expect that kind of action.

8. Effective All Men Games

A lot of people who are against ladies events complain, "There are no male only events." Can anyone reading this tell me they've never heard of some weekly poker game or private club in which women are for the most part, not welcome or just not invited? For instance, have you ever seen a woman in the Sopranos game? And you know that game has to be good value. So unfair! Especially since I have a hunch that Carmela would crush it.

I hope I convinced some detractors and provided defensive ammunition to those who already agreed with me. So I look forward to playing with you and/or your sister/girlfriend/friends at the pokerstars satellites, including the generous Woman Poker Player Freeroll. And if you go all the way, remember to send me a postcard from Monte Carlo.