I'm excited to be writing for Woman Poker Player. Having been involved in the poker industry since the mid-1970’s, I feel very well qualified to write about women in poker. I have witnessed the growth of poker not only in the last decade, but for women every year since I first got involved.

Because this is my first article for Woman Poker Player, I'll start out with some background of my poker career. I began playing poker in 1974 and immediately loved the game. Since I lived in Southern California, I frequented the cardrooms in Gardena and made weekend trips to Las Vegas while still working full time at the Post Office.

The poker world was a lot different thirty years ago. Few women played poker, which wasn't a surprise since the environment wasn't nearly as pleasant and civil as it is today. Six- and seven-card stud as well as razz were much more popular than Texas-hold'em was at that time. There were hardly any books to be found about poker, and poker magazines, software, online poker sites, video training etc., weren't available.

When I first moved to Las Vegas, I played low limits of $2-$4 or $3-$6. My normal playing schedule looked something like this...I would leave home about lunchtime and make an afternoon poker stop at the Aladdin (now the Planet Hollywood) or the Bingo Palace (now the Palace Station). Around dinner time, I would drive Downtown and play either at the Mint (Binion's Horseshoe eventually bought the Mint) or the Fremont Hotel until the early hours of the morning. I knew this was the life I was meant to be leading. I used to pinch myself every day to see if it was a dream or reality.

I moved up in limits very slowly (as I always instruct my students) and learned lots of “new” games like hold'em, which became very popular in Las Vegas in the 1980s. After a few years as a pro, I worked my way up to “the big game.” The game most pros played back then was at the Golden Nugget. It was a $10-$20 limit hold'em game with a 50-cent ante and one $5 blind. My how things have changed!

In the mid-1980s, I was playing at the Golden Nugget one night when the first game of nine-card hold'em (the game we now know as Omaha/8) was introduced to Las Vegas. I jumped right in and immediately loved the “game of the future.” Bill Boyd, who was the Golden Nugget cardroom manager at the time, wanted to name it Nugget Hold'em. In fact, I may be the only person in the world to have a trophy engraved $10-$20 Nugget Hold'em Best Player Award.:)

In 1993, I quit playing poker full time to become the publisher and co-owner of Card Player magazine. I still went to the poker rooms every chance I got. I realized my poker goal in 1997 when I won a WSOP bracelet in razz. I still remember it like it was yesterday. I was ecstatic, not just because I had won, but because a woman had won! I had hopes that this would help to bring more women into the poker world.

In the past decade or so, women have taken the poker world by storm. Though poker was once thought of as a man’s game and the poker room was no place for a “lady,” many women have helped to prove these myths wrong. Women are qualified to win poker events, to battle ferociously on the felt, and to be respected in the industry. More than a dozen women have since won WSOP bracelets. The Women in Poker Hall of Fame and the new Poker Maven Awards exist. There are multiple women's poker tours including LIPS (the Ladies International Poker Series), the HHPT (the High Heels Poker Tour), and the PLPT (Pink Ladies Poker Tour). There are online forums for women's poker discussions including WomensPokerClub.com, LadyPokerSharks.com and PokerChix.com. Annette Obrestad won the 2007 WSOP Europe Main Event. Kathy Liebert was the first person to win $1,000,000 in a limit hold'em event. Annie Duke won first-place honors in the 2010 National Heads-up Tournament. Just this week Vanessa Selbst (a runner up in a WPT event and WSOP bracelet winner) bested 715 players to win the NAPT main event at the Mohegan Sun.

Back in the “dark ages” of poker, few women even entered open events . . . now they are winning them. When looking at the number of female entrants in the open-field events, women are winning more than their percentage share. There's “no-limit” to how well women have adjusted to playing the game.