Damsels in distress in poker

I started playing poker in college in the late 1970s, a rollicking weekly social gathering punctuated by Rolling Rock (for me) and rolling joints (for everyone else).

It began as a 25-cent game, and, a couple of years later, after much consideration, we doubled the stakes to 50 cents. Win or lose, it was forever fun, and it was hard to win or lose more than $20 in a night.

I have a million memories from those potato-chip-and-a-chair evenings, among them the following two truths:

1. I was the best player at the game, which doesn’t reflect well on the skill level of our group.

2. The second-best player at the game became my first wife and, of course – ultimately and more critically – my first ex-wife.

Jodie – her real name, which I can say again with the court order being lifted – was tough to bluff and tough to read; she carried those qualities into our somewhat brief marriage.

But beyond her poker craftiness, one other aspect of Jodie stood out, and still stands out:

She was the only dame in the game.

That was then, this is now. Except, inexplicably, now is like then.

More than 35 years later, I’m still playing poker at least once a week in a Los Angeles card room, and if Jodie showed up to belatedly reconcile, she’d likely be the only female in the game.

Where are all the women?

Only a couple of them are running for president, so that leaves millions of others with some free, discretionary time on their hands.

Poker has no gender barriers – you walk in, you buy chips, you sit down, you play cards. It’s the closest thing to a true meritocracy in America.

Yet as the game has grown exponentially over the last decade – the poker TV boom, online poker (where legal), the drove of dream seekers flocking to Las Vegas every summer for the World Series of Poker – there are remarkably few women in sight.

In almost every WSOP tournament, including the marquee, ESPN-branded $10,000 buy-in Main Event that attracts nearly 7,000 entrants, women account for less than 5 percent of the field; Hollywood screenwriter Carol Fuchs just became the first female to win a bracelet at the 2015 WSOP in the 52nd event of the series.

How many businesses out there thrive with just 5 percent of their customers being women?

The small number of females playing at the WSOP is not just disappointing, it’s embarrassing.

When they do play, they play well.

(Why is this? Because women are smarter than men. Duh.)

A generation ago, groundbreaking women such as Barbara Enright, Susie Isaacs, Marsha Waggoner and Poker Hall of Famer Linda Johnson proved their chops at the WSOP. They were followed by another talented group, including JJ Liu and bracelet winners Annie Duke, Jennifer Harman, Kathy Liebert and Cyndy Violette. And now there’s the next generation – Loni Harwood, Maria Ho and the incomparable Vanessa Selbst, who won three WSOP bracelets before turning 30.

Then there’s my ESPN colleague, Kara Scott, as good of a poker broadcaster as there is. Unlike my booth mate Lon McEachern and myself, she knows the game, plays the game, talks the game. Heck, Kara makes Lon and me look like Mutt and Jeff.

We just need more, lots more, of these deep-stacked damsels.

So I’m pleading with the women of the world to come out of the boardroom and into the card room.

(Actually, that’s a whole other matter – women can’t even get into the boardroom because, well, men won’t let them.)

I know Toni, a k.a. She’s The One, loves it when I go to the card room; it gets me out of the house and out of her hair. Men, you should follow Toni’s lead: Encourage your wives to go to the card room – it creates a Boys Night Out for yourself without even having to leave your Barcalounger.

And, trust me gals, when you get to the poker room, the men sitting at the tables are often as stupid as we look.

Ask The Slouch

Q. Has the University of Maryland ever asked you to come back and speak to the kids with advice on careers and life in general? (Wilber Lazernik; Rockville, Md.)

A. Maryland has asked me to never come back and not speak to the kids, on or off-campus, in particular about its blind and costly pursuit of athletic non-excellence.

Q. Even The Slouch couldn’t defend Zen master Phil Jackson’s spin-the-roulette-wheel pick of Kristaps Porzingis, could you? (Russell Richter; Indianapolis)

A. Hey, he’s a 7-foot-1 guy who can shoot 3s and mix it up inside, plus he’s got smarts – who else in the draft can spell “triangle offense” in Latvian?

Q. Did the news that he bet on baseball games as a player take the bloom off Pete Rose for you? (Eugene Anderson; Charleston, W.Va.)

A. The bigger news – not reported yet – is that Brian Williams saw Pete Rose place wagers as a player during Hurricane Katrina and the Iraqi war.

Q. If a pitcher doesn’t point up on an infield pop up, will the infielders not see the ball? (Ron Shafer; Williamsburg, Va.)

A. Pay the man, Shirley.