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I also am contemplating my future here, and have been for a while. The haters gonna love this post but I honestly don't care.
When I first started playing, I was so full of passion I couldn't get enough. I was playing low stakes cash games with such drive that this is in no way an exaggeration, I was playing probably an average of 15 hours a day, for 4 years, missing literally less than a week in a full year (from traveling or illness). I couldn't get enough, and despite not being studied in any way, betting all the wrong sizes and intuitively playing a pure explotative / live read game still somehow was winning right from the start. I'm incredibly competitive and winning consistently just fired me up more. I would wake up in the evening and my first thought would be to immediately head to the casino where I would play until sunrise, and rinse and repeat for over 4 years. Every day, same thing. I Ioved it. I played in some incredibly hostile rooms (low stakes games are particularly the worst for this), but also the people who are socially the worst are often the biggest losers and women are often the easiest target - especially if you're beating them and they're angry - so you have a lot of incentive to just tolerate things or diffuse situations, but even with a thick skin this eventually wears on your and feels heavy. Being called a b*tch or c*nt and worse for doing nothing but winning pots ultimately caused me to just wear headphones and become incredibly antisocial for a period, where I continued playing refused to talk to anyone.
I've always felt like a bit of an outsider (and have heard this sentiment echoed by other women), where we are not as easily or at all accepted into the higher quality group improvement cliques that are formed where everyone who participates ultimately help each other. I've never used this as an excuse and have basically lone-wolfed my career for all 10 years to this point without complaint, despite knowing my progress is slowed or ultimately capped by not having access to the full range of communal resources. These groups exist where young men in their early 20s who display intelligence and drive and are taken under someone's wing and backed just aren't available in the same way if you're a woman.
I never let that stop me and still managed a moderate level of success that granted me at least a little bit of a voice, which I tried to use to bring visibility to things like treatment of women in low stakes (attempting to put a lot of pressure on casinos for their floor staff and dealers to step up intervention when someone is being bullied and there is a power imbalance that causes the targeted party to be unable to stand up for themselves) - something that sours initial experiences for new players since most of us start in low stakes where egos are most fragile and players are most volatile which ultimately turns a lot of women away. I tried to draw visibility to the lack of effort into attracting women into the game despite them being the largest completely untapped demographic. Discrepancy in compensation for sponsored female players - to this date the highest paid female sponsored player I am aware of was somewhere around the $350k/y, while the highest paid male gets $1.2M/MONTH last I heard (more now as I understand it). And while no one would argue the top men CLEARLY have much greater reach and influence, it is so laughably out of proportion for their relative marketing value (14.4M a year vs $350k - even if the top women only have 10% the exposure, that number should still be more like 1.4M/y) AND they're appealing to audiences with potential for massively more growth, where every 30-40 year old white male they add to the roster is just overlapping with representation which I'm sure carries significant diminishing returns.
I personally gave up a career defining position where I could have played fully backed nose bleed high rollers (50k+) and was positioned to skyrocket to make a name for myself, all because I had an ethical problem with the company being disingenuous even though I knew full well I would likely not get those opportunities to launch into the top ranks ever again. I've spoken out against prominent ambassadors who were openly misogynistic and harmful to the disappointing perception and respect shown towards women in our industry, and again got monetarily punished for it.
It is also significantly more difficult to find higher stakes backing, especially if you refuse any deal with unsavory strings. Vanessa Selbst herself spoke about how one of the major reasons she quit was that she couldn't get backing. Women are by default simply seen as not as skilled, and lack the connections because of being on the outside of the communities. Some of the few women I know who have gotten high level backing is in whole or part through connections with their romantic partners who are part of those same networks we're often excluded from, a couple without those ins but not many.
Again, this is not an excuse (as I have successfully chugged along for 10 years mostly as a lone wolf), just an acknowledgement that there are so many hurdles that make things so much harder.
In one case when I had a sponsorship I had a fellow ambassador I'd never even interacted with repeatedly attacking me unprovoked over a course of a year despite being told multiple times to stop, and after ignoring much of it when I finally defended myself, somehow come off as looking just as bad as him when he was the instigator and attacker in every single case.
Some of these guys say unimaginably vile things on the regular, publicly, on all kinds of topics, with no consequences whatsoever to their partnership prospects, and are effectively untouchable. But women do not carry this immunity - when women diplomatically express reasonable opinions, flag issues, or defend themselves, correct lies that have been levied against them, or participate in public discussions they are labeled as obnoxious, annoying, "the problem" or just as bad as the men acting atrociously.
At the end of the day, if you want to be a successful woman in poker, the only way is to play the game: keep your opinions to yourself, and be thin, young and attractive, and post cleavage shots, or in a couple cases I like better - make sincerely funny content. We don't actually really reward women to the same degree for developing skill or finding success or getting big scores as players and I find this incredibly depressing. If I played the game where I only posted tastefully sexy photos and kept my mouth shut I would be light-years ahead in terms of sponsorship / partnership income and public approval, and it's incredibly depressing. I even tried that avenue briefly years ago and just felt icky about it and that it was not authentically me.
Simultaneously the personal cost for being outspoken has been life-alteringly high, and I often do not feel as though I've made almost any impact on the things I was trying to change for the better.
I could double down and pour myself into improvement and grinding. I could stay and play the game as they want (leave the discussions to the men, keep my opinions to myself, and exclusively post poker results and selfies), or I could consider a bigger life change out of poker.
I am not sure what is next, but I am disappointed with what I have cost myself and how little it's seemed to change things for the better.
I've booked out some self reflection time and will probably be off socials a while while I think about it.
