The
coronavirus pandemic has caused a lot of disruption to daily life
across the globe. Many facets of our lives have been changed
completely at the moment, with outdoor events virtually non-existent
for the foreseeable future. An extremely popular such event, the
World Series of Poker, takes place in Las Vegas every summer, but of
course, had to be postponed this year due to the coronavirus. Poker
fans can breathe easy though, since there is something available to
sate their poker cravings.
Poker
Queens is a new movie,
directed by Sandra
Mohr, streaming on Amazon Prime
Video and Vimeo. It tells the story of the world’s best female
poker players, and it is the breadth and range of those characters
which makes for compelling viewing. Mohr, who is a
more-than-competent player herself, has stated that the movie is not
just for card buffs, but has proven to be the first introduction to
the game for many people. The women in the movie have also served to
be inspirational, especially as women make up less than 7% of the
professional poker scene.
The game is
still remarkably sexist, with many men openly discouraging the
presence of women at their poker tables. No woman has ever won the
top prize at the World Series, and the movie features an interesting
sequence, where Sia Layta, a female professional, takes the help of a
Hollywood makeup artist to transform into a guy and enter a game. She
immediately ends up tripling her winnings, both in online play as
well as at VIP
casino games. The inherent bias in
the sport can be seen when the World Series threatened to disqualify
Layta and keep her $10,000 buy-in if she entered the tournament
dressed as a male.
Some of the
other ladies featured in the movie include actress and poker
professional Jennifer Tilly, and poker royalty in the form of Muskan
Sethi, Esther Taylor, Jan Fisher and many many more names from the
sport. There are some notable male figures from the sport who show up
as well, and all of them support more and more women joining them at
the tables.
Poker
Queens is an extremely enjoyable watch, not
just because it tells the story of a sport where women are still
considered outsiders, but also because each of those women featured
is compelling and amazing in their own right, and deserves to have
the same freedom to play the sport as their male counterparts.