Flush that
Flatmate Dean and I were flicking through the channels moaning like old people about there being nothing on any of the 1,234 channels when we came across the Ladbrokes female poker championships.Female poker?
Now I understand that women need their own championsips in boxing, weight lifting and sprinting. The body is just not the same, so it's really no different to having weight classes in boxing.
But poker?
Why on Earth do we need gender qualified contests for that? Are the cards really that heavy?
And then it became clear. Rather than the advantage be with men, in this case, poor men couldn't possibly compete with the women.
This is simply because men could not concentrate on the game in hand without collapsing in juvenile sniggers if there were women at the table.
Why? Well here are a few examples of commentator announcements, all taken from the 10 minutes we watched tonight...
"She needs to add a pink chip to her stack."
"She could really benefit from a touchy-feely flop"
"Veronika Larsen is on top now" (not an amazing double entendre, but Larsen was, for the record, absolutely lovely to look at)
"Now she's just waiting for a big hand,"
"She's looking for some 4 way action on her queen."
I mean, really, even the name. Poker? Come on.
posted by Peter The Great @ 9:45 PM
4 Comments:
Interestingly (to me, anyway) a lot of professional chess players are supplementing their income with professional poker as it utilises many of the same skill sets (it is said). So there is perhaps some sort of parallel.
Women have separate competitions for chess too (although they do compete alongside men as well). With one exception, no woman has ever broken into the game's élite (and she was absolutely specifically trained by her father from age 4 to be a top chess player).
Some people think that this is just because women (or, rather, girls, as you generally have to start young) simply don't take up the game in the same numbers as boys, so there is a smaller pool of potential talent on which to draw. I think there would be more exceptions if that were the main reason.
There is increasingly evidence that women find it more diffcult to concentrate on one task for long periods of time. This is the flip side of the famous idea that women are better at 'multi-tasking'.
The evolutionary theory (although it is speculative) is that men are conditioned to hunt prey, which requires a foucs on the task at hand, whereas women are conditioned to look after the children back in the cave, which requires an awareness of lots of different things going on at the same time.
This argument is also used to explain women (in general) having better peripheral vision, but men having better 'straight in front' vision: for throwing a spear at a deer, you need to focus on that deer; for coping with the demands of a busy cave, you need 'eyes in the back of your head'.
But I digress.
The difference between poker and chess is revealed in your comment that Larsen was 'lovely to look at'. Again with only a few exceptions, this is definitely not the case with the top female chess players.
Maybe chess has some marketing lessons to learn ...
Wasn't there a recent fight between two male chess players over a female chess player? Ah yes, it's
here.
The article starts as follows.
FOR one British grandmaster, his rival had made a move too far. Danny Gormally, one of Britain’s leading chess players, allegedly attacked the world No 3 at an international tournament for dancing with a beautiful Australian player.
Levon Aronian, leading light of the Armenian chess scene, was apparently punched and shoved, and ended up on the floor during a party at the recent Chess Olympiad in Turin.
He had been spotted jiving with Arianne Caoili, 19, an Australian grandmaster known as the Anna Kournikova of the chess world. Mr Gormally was known by team-mates to be fond of her.
But the next day, after the England captain apologised to the Armenian team, the repercussions continued. When Mr Gormally went out for a coffee with friends, he was attacked by a group of young Armenian players seemingly bent on revenge for their star player.
There's even a picture of the lovely Ms Caoili.
That boy Gormally will go far ... he's a good lad, just got one or two 'issues' that's all ...
As for Caoili, she ain't that nice (more pictures at her website http://www.ariannecaoili.net/gallery/index.htm )
but she is probabyl the best the chess world has to offer.
Not my type though, I go more for the slightly scrawny, over made-up, would-probably-put-out-for-a-fistful-of-Western-currency look of some of the Eastern European girls ... But that's just me ...
Have you been to Sofia? Sounds like your sort of place.
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