Capture the Flag With Jessica Dawley

Name: Jessica Dawley

Hometown: Jeffersonville, Indiana

Age: 32

Years Playing Poker Professionally: 7

Cash Game Most Frequently Played: $5-10 or $10-$20 no-limit hold’em

Top Poker Accomplishment: 17th place finish in the 2010 Aussie Millions main event

Twitter: @JessicaDawley

Poker pro Jessica Dawley is a sponsored player for 888poker, one of several online poker sites in New Jersey. The cash game grinder was brought on to help promote women in the game of poker.

Through the partnership, Dawley has been providing tutorials, starting in New Jersey, to help women better understand the fundamentals of online poker play. Dawley herself plays in some of the biggest no-limit hold’em cash games that run on a regular basis at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, when she’s in town.

Dawley is a former Air Force Intelligence Analyst, who served in the Middle East during Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. She turned to playing poker professional after finishing school and completing her six-year commitment to the United States military.

Card Player had the chance to ask her about some of the issues women face in poker, and why they still make up only four to six percent of the poker playing population.

Brian Pempus: Can you talk about your poker career and how you got started?

Jessica Dawley: I’ve pretty much played some form of poker my entire life. My uncle taught me how to play when I was really little. I was a huge tomboy growing up. I played poker in high school. I used to supplement my income from my job at Pizza Hut in a Thursday night game I used to play in. I was the only female there. At first, they didn’t want to let me play. My boyfriend at the time convinced them that I knew how to play.

Later, they didn’t want me to play because I was winning too much. When I was in the military, there was a lot of down time, and we played a lot of poker. Eventually I tried live casino poker, when I was around 21 or 22. I had played online before I played live. My first game was $1-$2 no-limit hold’em, and I realized I was doing well in the game. I was still in the military at the time, so I couldn’t pick up and leave at any time. I had to stay in the Louisville, Kentucky area. When my enlistment was up in 2007, I had played a lot of poker by then. I had already graduated from college the previous year. Not even a year later, after I got out of the military, I moved out to Las Vegas. My dream was always to become a professional poker player. In October of 2008, I packed my car up and moved to Las Vegas. I moved out there with $3,400 to my name. I didn’t care. I was going to make a go of it. I couldn’t afford to lose. I was just really fortunate. I played really aggressive and ABC poker. A little less than a year, later my bankroll was at $80,000. So, I was just really fortunate. I had the support of my family. My parents told me that they wanted me to live my dream and would help me out if I went bust.

BP: What are some of the main challenges to getting more women interested in poker?

JD: I think the intimidation factor deters some women from playing. Especially when you go to the casino and the tables have eight or nine men. I think poker is like 96 percent male. If you had more females playing you would get more playing, but you have to get more females in the first place. Live casinos don’t cater to women very much, for example, with cocktail waitresses who have to dress the way they do for work. It’s definitely a more male-dominated environment. I think if casinos took us a bit more seriously, we would feel more compelled to play in their establishments. Women are highly-sexualized in these environments, and I’m not a big fan of that. Women have come a long way, but we need to come a little bit further to get more respect. I think until that happens, until the casinos realize that we are there too, you probably won’t see more poker activity from females.

BP: Do you think some of the responsibility should be on male poker players to treat their fellow tablemates, especially women, better and be more welcoming?

JD: Definitely. For me personally, I am a type-A personality, so when guys say stuff like, “You belong in a kitchen,” or, “What are you doing here? You should be at home raising the kids,” it doesn’t affect me because I have pretty thick skin, thanks to being the military and playing sports. But there are a lot of people out there who don’t want to accept those comments and who get really affected by it. You are not going to play poker to get ridiculed and berated. At the table, some guys talk sh-t and say stuff like that, and the floor doesn’t come over and say they’ll get kicked out if they continue.

The behavior is not bad enough in their opinion. I don’t want to say female players might be fish, but it’s a similar concept. When a fish sits down and beats you, you don’t berate them. We are all there to collect the fish’s money. We should all want more players in the game because it’s more money in circulation. I have yet to understand why this happens. If you want to have a guys’ night, have a guys’ night, but not at the casino poker room. It’s not your property. It’s not your poker game. It’s a free country. Don’t you want more people to have the opportunity to play poker?

BP: What do you think can be done to re-educate some of these male cash game players to help them change the way they interact with their opponents at the poker table?

JD: I think maybe if there was more written about this topic the poker rooms will catch on and believe there is some validity to this and ask the question: How much would we grow if we could get the other 50% of the market into our establishment?

BP: Can you talk about the importance of online poker in getting more people interested in the game and hopefully getting us to the point where we can have another poker boom? It seems like online poker’s anonymity is great for learning to play and not feeling embarrassed.

JD: It’s great. Anonymity is one of the upsides to online. It is super beneficial to females, because you can cut your teeth online and get more comfortable with the game. When you move on to live poker, you will already have established yourself and you won’t feel uncomfortable. I think there will be a huge poker boom if more females get into the game. It’s a huge market that is untapped. If online poker catered more toward the female population, imagine what they would do for the poker community—even if women could one day represent just 20 percent of the poker playing community.

BP: Do you think having live poker rooms desexualize things and take other measures to cater to women would be more effective than having more female-only poker tournaments?

JD: Yeah, definitely. I am happy there is a ladies-only tournament [at the WSOP], but what’s that going to do in the long-term? We are only playing against other women. That’s not the answer. That’s not the solution. It helps and I appreciate those tournaments, but more is needed.

BP: If a woman approached you and asked about how she should go about playing $1-$2 no-limit hold’em in a casino, what advice would you give her?

JD: Well, if they were in New Jersey, I would tell them to actually get online and play the micro-stakes. Even $0.01-$0.02 is a good idea. I wouldn’t recommend free play, because it doesn’t have the right dynamic. You should play for real-money and have some sort of risk. You can’t learn much from free play. At the micro-stakes you can actually learn the game for a very little investment.

BP: Given that women as a group have been historically, in some sense, excluded from poker, can you talk about why the smallest stakes in a live poker room might be too high then for a true beginner?

JD: The problem with starting out in a casino is that $1-$2 is a huge game for someone with little experience. A minimum buy-in of $100 isn’t that small. Online, you can play thousands of hands and lose maybe $10. You don’t have to play a high-stakes game to learn. You can see many poker situations for a tiny investment. You can experiment moving up in the ranks too. ♠