FEMALE PROFESSIONAL POKER PLAYERS

NANI DOLLISON

Nani Dollison was born and raised in Korea and she moved to the United States at the age of nineteen when she married her American husband, but the two separated a year later. Dollison supported herself by working in restaurants until she landed a job in a Gardena, California casino as a chip runner in 1977. She soon became a poker dealer at the Eldorado Club, and her and her new beau became regulars at the Club. It was during this time that Dollison mastered her poker skills. (If you want to master your poker skills, you should play on the free tables at PokerStars.com.)

Dollison started playing in poker tournaments in 1998 and is the winner of three bracelets: she won the 2000 and 2001 WSOP $1,000 Women's Seven-Card Stud and the 2001 Limit Holdem. At the time, she was the leading female money winner at the WSOP.

Dollison still enters tournaments today and is known for being a friendly, but aggressive player. She works part-time as a dealer at the Horseshoe Casino in Tunica, Mississippi.

ANNIE DUKE

Annie Duke is arguably one of the most famous and most competitive poker players around. She was born in Concord, New Hampshire in 1965. Her parents were teachers and at one time, Annie also considered a career in education. She went to Columbia University after high school and earned an English and psychology bachelor’s degree.

In 1991, while completing her PhD in cognitive psychology, Duke proposed to her long-time friend, Ben Duke. After he said "yes," she dropped out of school. The two married and moved to Colorado where she played in local poker tournaments to pay the mortgage.

Duke's brother, Howard "The Professor" Lederer, taught her to play poker and encouraged her to compete in tournaments. In 1994, she entered her first WSOP tournament with Howard. The two made history by being the first brother and sister to make it to the final table, where Duke finished ahead of her brother (13th). She won her first bracelet in 2000 by winning a $2,000 buy-in Omaha High-Low Split. She beat out 234 opponents for the honor. That same year, Duke beat eight of the world's best players to win $2 million in a No-Limit Holdem winner-take-all, invitation-only WSOP Tournament of Champions.

Duke is also an author; she penned a book about her experience playing poker in an industry traditionally dominated by men, while simultaneously raising a family. She has also been a poker coach to several celebrity poker players, including Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.

Duke increased her celebrity among non-poker players when she appeared on The Apprentice in 2009, making it to the last final two players. She had tough competition in Joan Rivers, and in the end, Rivers’ experience trumped Duke’s ultra-competitiveness, and Duke had to settle for a second-place finish.

When Duke’s not exercising her competitive nature knocking out her opponents in a live game, she’s increasing her already swollen bankroll by playing online at UltimateBet.com, where she is a member of Team UB. 

AIDILY "LILY" ELVIRO



Lily Elviro is considered to be one of the hottest female poker players today. Not only is she attractive, but Elviro has taken the poker world by storm: in 2005, she came in second to actress Jennifer Tilly at the WPT's Ladies’ Night Out  tournament, followed by a 27th placement at the World Poker Challenge's $5,100 buy-in No-Limit Texas Holdem Championship. During this tournament, she earned a third of her prize money for the entire year. A few months later, she placed 12th at the Mirage Poker Showdown's No-Limit Holdem and 5th at the WSOP No-Limit circuit event at Lake Tahoe.

Elviro was born in Miami to a family of gambling fans and she started going to casinos as soon as she reached legal age. Her future husband, Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi, is also a poker player and the two met at a casino. He helped Elviro hone her game.

BARBARA ENRIGHT

Barbara Enright's first poker session was playing against her older brother at the age of four. This experience proved to be helpful as she would later go on to play against mainly male opponents once she started playing professionally. In 1986, she won her first bracelet in the Ladies’ Championship, and then another one in 1994, and again in 1996. In 2000, she was bestowed the All-Around Player award at the Legends of Poker tournament, and at the time she was the only female professional player to receive this award.

Since 2005, Enright has been the editor-in-chief of Woman Poker Player magazine, the first poker magazine for women. She is known for her wit and for encouraging new female players to take up the game. Enright was diagnosed with lupus in 1976. However, she's a fighter and has continued to persevere through her disease. 

WENDEEN EOLIS

Wendeen Eolis is credited with being the first female player to finish "in the money": in 1986, she placed 25th at the WSOP. Binion, her home casino, honored Eolis with her own commemorative chip.

When not playing poker, Eolis is involved with New York politics and international business. She has a degree in psychology and started her own head-hunting company that specializes in American lawyers.

Eolis is also a motivational speaker, writer and mother to two adult children and six grandchildren. She credits her poker and life success to her "Three-D Philosophy": discipline, desire and determination.

CLONIE GOWEN

Cycalone ‘Clonie’ Gowen has been winning her entire life: in high school, she was ranked seventh in the high jump in Oklahoma; she played basketball on the top-ranked team in the state; and she was crowned Miss Teen McAlester, Oklahoma, when she was fifteen years old.

Gowen used to drive from Dallas, where she lived, to Shreveport, Louisiana, to play poker on the weekends where she was making several hundred dollars each week. She started playing in tournaments, and when she placed tenth at the WPT Costa Rica Classic, people took notice. She followed up with an unexpected win at the inaugural WPT Ladies’ Night event in 2003, beating out opponents Annie Duke and Jennifer Harman.

Today, Gowen travels all over the world either hosting or playing in poker tournaments. She is also a co-owner of a poker school and is a mother to two children.

JENNIFER HARMAN

Jennifer Harman learned how to play Texas Holdem when she was just eight years old simply by watching her father play in a home game. Five years later, her father recognized that his daughter had talent after he let her play a losing hand for him which she won, naturally. He asked a family friend to tutor Jennifer in poker and by the time she was sixteen, she was sneaking into casinos to play against adults. As soon as she legal to enter casinos when she was twenty-one, she started playing full-time and concentrated on No-Limit Texas Holdem. Her preferred game is one of the biggest cash games in the world: the $4,000-$8,000 mixed game at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. She’s an expert in a variety of games, but it was her knowledge in No-Limit Texas Holdem that prompted Doyle Brunson to ask her to write a chapter about it in his book, SuperSystems 2.

Harman had health issues with her kidneys her whole life, and in 2004, she had a kidney transplant (her niece was the donor), prompting her to found the organization Creating Organ Donation Awareness.

SUSIE ISAACS

Susie Issacs was born in Nashville, Tennessee and when she was four years old, she used to be on the lookout for parents so her older, male cousins could gamble without getting caught. When she was a few years older, she sold all of her comic books, giving her a rich bankroll of $2.35 to play with.

Isaacs moved to Las Vegas after she divorced her husband in 1986, and was instantly drawn to the casino cardrooms. Near-penniless after the divorce, she didn’t have a lot of money to spend on “fun” poker, so before she started playing with real money, she hired tutors and educated herself about poker strategy, and once she was confident in her abilities, she began playing full-time. Her hard work paid off ten years later when she won a WSOP bracelet in 1986, and again in 1987.

Isaacs is also a prolific poker writer: she’s had over three-hundred articles published, she has a regular column in Card Player magazine, and she published a book, Ms. Poker: Up Close and Personal, in which she writes about her personal poker story and her poker strategy.

KATHIE LIEBERT

Kathie Liebert was born in Tennessee and raised in Long Island, New York. She has a degree in finance and business and worked in the corporate world early in her career. She became bored by her job, and eventually took her mother’s advice to find a job she truly enjoyed: professional poker player.

Liebert began playing poker professionally in 1991, and since then, she’s won several big tournaments, including the inaugural Party Poker Million No-Limit Holdem Championship in 2002, making her the first woman to win a $1 million cash prize. In 2004, she won her first WSOP bracelet in the Limit Holdem Shootout.

JENNIFER TILLY

Jennifer Tilly is a Canadian-American actress whose most memorable on-screen performance was her lesbian make-out session with Gina Gershon in Bound. But in the last several years, much to the chagrin of teenage boys everywhere, Tilly turned her focus from acting to poker. Her boyfriend, professional poker player Phil “The Unabomber” Laak, might have been the reason for Tilly’s career change. He taught her poker strategy and gave her tips for playing in tournaments, and in 2005, all of her training paid off when she knocked out 600 other players to win her first bracelet and $158,625 in the Ladies No-Limit Holdem event at the WSOP. Several months later, she also won the WPT Ladies Invitational Tournament at the Bicycle Casino in Los Angeles. As of 2008, Tilly has earned in excess of $450,000 in poker winnings.

CINDY VIOLETTE

Cindy Violette was born in Queens, NY, and started playing poker at twelve years of age when her family moved to Las Vegas. She was a Blackjack and poker dealer in the 1980s, but it wasn’t until she entered a Lake Tahoe poker tournament that she realized she was actually quite good at the game. She used her winnings from that tournament to increase her bankroll, and not long after, she won $74,000 in a Seven-Card Stud tournament at the Golden Nugget, which was the most money won by a woman at the time. She turned pro after winning that tournament and in 2004, she won the Seven-Card Stud High-Low tournament at the WSOP, and in 2005, she made it to three final tables.
Violette moved to Atlantic City in 1993 after her marriage fell apart. She lived in the Taj Mahal Hotel and Casino for an entire summer, and in the spring the following year, she decided to make Atlantic City her home base. To date, Violette has finished in the money twenty-one times at the WSOP, and once at the WPT, with winnings totaling more than $950,000.
She’s also interested in spirituality, metaphysics, and healthy living and is working on a line of poker-related clothing and inspirational products.
All of these women have two things in common: 1. They’re exceptionally talented poker players. 2. They all got to be as good as they are by playing lots of poker! The more you play, the more opportunities you’ll have to see poker odds and strategy in action, and how ignoring them and playing more hands than you should will drain your bankroll. But you don’t have to live in Las Vegas or Atlantic City to play a lot of games – just do it online! They all do! The best site for beginners and expert players is PokerStars.com and they have spread free tables in all sorts of betting styles and limits – you’re sure to improve your game after spending some time playing poker online!

Previous page | Next page