'I'm a 65-year-old Pro Poker Player in Las Vegas—Men Hate Losing to Me'

Gambling with death, Western settlers found the lure of the American frontier compelling. There's something about this part of the world that invites these wild bets. Nearly two hundred years later I too moved West, nursing goldrush-esque visions of a radically different life.

In 2020, I left the cramp of New York for dazzling high clouds and the slot-machine serenade of Las Vegas, Nevada. It was just before my 63rd birthday, and cramming three decades of a Lower East Side life into twenty scannable boxes, I moved across the republic to play professional poker. Chasing a dream is hard enough when young. When you're older, time gets weird. Death is closer. I desperately needed this odd life phase, in a scorching desert playground, to fly.

Comfy planes aside, leaving home after 30 years was traumatic. Lonely in my new town and gazing into the Bellagio fountains, fate brought an old friend, one of the first poker game runners I'd met in New York. "Come watch us play some poker," Luke said, seeing unfallen tears in my eyes and jotting down his number. "You'll be cheered."

Learning poker in my fifties

I had zero training in math, backgammon, video games, or chess when, in middle age, poker called to me without warning at a midtown corporate affair where I first learned No Limit Hold 'Em. I quickly fell in love with the game, because on the felt, aggression was life. I became the traditional idea of a woman, the one I had grown up with, in name only. No smiling. No deference. The game teased a long-slumbering warrior muscle inside me to life.

New York is a city on speed, its poker life equally enthralling. Soon I was cutting my teeth in seedy underground cash games. I adored a taste of the illicit, knocking on thick doors, trusting a world defined by private glances and secret codes.

Beginning in 2014, a proud 57-year-old in a billion-dollar global boy's club, I spent several years writing novels by day and playing low-stakes games by night. I found a coach, studied relentlessly, wrote a poker book, lost and won and lost and held on for dear life. Long term, my goal was to strengthen my game and move up in stakes. I needed to push up against other pros who had more years and who would challenge my game. Moving to a casino city was a natural next step as I envisioned a deeper commitment.

Moving to Las Vegas

For years I'd heard intriguing rumors about private Vegas games and didn't know what to expect. That evening, walking slowly into Luke's ritzy home game, I became Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, my shy eyes wider, as I came upon over $100,000 in chips covering a deep-blue felt. This game was a thousand miles past NYC's dark hallways and crooked stairs where I had first paid my poker dues. Toto, we've certainly got the hell out of Kansas, I thought. I yearned to be good enough one day to sit Luke's game.

Seeing my shyness, Luke kept me flush in vodka martinis. Once the money shock wore off, my trepidation morphed into calm. By the time I left, I was indifferent to the money—a sure sign I was in the right life. Or so I hoped.

When I first started, I was inspired by the many brave women who had paved the way before me. Even when Old West saloon poker reeked of gunpowder and whiskey, a few took their chances. Fearless brothel owners like Poker Alice in the early 20th century blazed a trail for all the dames who dared to wager in the long century that followed. Once seen as grungy and seedy, poker got a boost in the early aughts, when televised high-stakes tournaments, which included women, turned players into overnight big shots and the game became sexy.

Is it time for young girls to put professional poker on a vision board? Unlike most corporate careers, the game cares little about age, race, and class. Answering to no one, a poker girl can control her time and bankroll. The game is wickedly hard, compelling years of study and thousands of hands to achieve profit and a pro mindset. What do I think is poker's ace in the hole? It's one of the few jobs where women don't have to play nice with powerful men to achieve comparable economic privilege. Perhaps more young women playing college sports, living a diverse world and demanding more equality, will feel readier and able to storm poker's competitive barricades.

I had played thousands of hours before I moved to Vegas. I'll never forget a hand I played early on against a man named Flynn—a skilled, lanky maniac with an attack-dog style and tremendous confidence, who got to our Hell's Kitchen spot drunk and smelly. Late one night, he ran his two-pair hand into my three kings. I had the courage to bet everything I had. He lost his stack to me and when I pulled the chips my way, my hands shook and my back briefly spasmed, my success overwhelming. Flynn stormed out, angry he lost to a "girl" and a beginner, both.

My early Vegas days were hardly a march toward victory. I had worked tirelessly with three coaches up to the move yet "brain fog" prevailed and I quickly lit some of my bankroll on fire. Every fear and old tilt trigger shot to the surface. I briefly dropped down in stakes to fix mistakes.

Nothing in my history prepared me for this daunting learning curve, playing against some of the best men at my level, in serious Vegas poker rooms, with many thousands of dollars flying across tables.

Women in the poker world

Some naysayers have suggested broads don't have the proper battle genes to get the job done. World Series of Poker champion Vanessa Selbst, with nearly $12 million in lifetime tournament earnings, would disagree. As would cash-game icon Jennifer Harman—the only girl who played regularly in the ultra-high-stakes games in Bellagio Casino's famed Bobby's Room—who, for over 20 years, rightfully earned tremendous respect on the Vegas circuit. I get a lot of respect when I play, but I also had to deal with the sexism that rises when men lose to women of any age, and things are said, playfully and otherwise.

And there are still fewer women in the industry broadly. Yet I call this the golden age for women in poker—starting with the enormously successful 2022 World Poker Tour Ladies' World Championship at the Wynn Casino in Las Vegas, and the Ladies International Poker Series (LIPS).

We're seeing girl-focused media, and high-stakes-cash streaming platforms featuring women players. Speaking at the 2002 Women in Poker Hall of Fame ceremony, poker pro, and award-winning commentator, Maria Ho said it best. "What female champions have in common is a tenacious resilient spirit that has kept them coming back to an environment that hasn't always made them feel welcomed."

Not to mention the influence of successful books like The Biggest Bluff by Maria Konnikova, and the Academy Award-nominated film Molly's Game. Best of all, according to veteran poker journalist Jennifer Newell, the 2022 World Series of Poker featured 10,529 entries from women (including those paying $10,000 to compete in the main event), with a total of 5.8 percent non-male players. These tournament numbers may not seem groundbreaking. But "never before has this percentage been so close to 6 percent," Newell wrote in a recent article.

But is poker gambling? Technically, it is, but I believe that modern poker can be misunderstood. Of course, any wager is technically gambling, and gambling can be dangerous and addictive, yet poker is unique. My view is that it is different from other casino games; pro poker requires tremendous study, focus, and concentration, and qualifies as a game of skill.

For me, the game has felt intellectually transforming and ultimately, empowering. Taught from birth to favor masculinity, I'm a boomer with a particular history. No longer a bullied and anxious child, my poker life is a pure feminist howl.

Frankly, it's a pretty odd life, the threat of financial ruin always near. Yet grinding live cash and training hard with the Vegas big kids, hoping to move up in stakes as my skill deepens, my rebellion is hardly a bluff. Hand for hand I'm a girl in blissful combat, endlessly defying the power grid.

Sasha Eileen Sutton is a professional poker player and novelist who lives in Las Vegas, Nevada.

All views expressed in this article are the author's own.