Poker Articles

Comparing the Chauvinist Man to a Macho Man
By Gary Carson

I haven't read the book yet, but I heard of a new book critical of the feminist movement. It's Ceasefire: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality (Free Press), by Cathy Young, a reporter for the Boston Globe.

The message of the book is relevant to women who play poker. The message is that the feminist movement has moved from a movement aimed at equality to one aimed at giving women the upper hand in society. Young thinks that's a bad thing. Whether you agree with that or not, it has some relevance to poker, where women are often seen moaning about a lack of equality in poker rather than using the situation to gain an advantage.

Women poker players can usually profit by adjusting their game to exploit the foibles of male opponents. Different kinds of men call for different approaches, sometimes the differences between male stereotypes can be subtle. Two different kinds of men are those that I call chauvinists and those I call macho.

Chauvinists

Chauvinistic men who tend to think all women are weak, predictable, tight players and that women have good judgment. He'll tend to try to be tricky when playing against women and he'll tend to ignore any information he might be able to get from observation of a woman.

Macho men can't stand to let a woman win or take control of the betting. This kind of man can't stand to lose, and especially can't stand to lose to a woman. He'll tend to develop an acute case of FPS trying to outplay an aggressive woman. He's usually doomed.

Playing chauvinistic men.

In a previous article, I talked about playing to exploit a chauvinistic man. They tend to react to aggressive women with hyperaggression of their own when they fear their hand is second best and that's an easily exploitable tendency.

Playing macho man

You should play against a macho player in a similar way that you'd play against a chauvinist, but you need to be more careful. The macho player is not likely to try to play deceptively when he has a big hand, like the chauvinistic player is. He's more likely to just play any hand he has aggressively. With the chauvinist player you can often be sure you have the best hand, even when your hand is weak. That's not the case with the macho player. With him you need to be much more selective with the hands you get involved with.

You probably don't want to get heads-up in a pot with a macho player with a hand like 8S 5S, as I suggest against a chauvinistic man, but you might want to with a hand like 8D 7D. With that hand you're more likely to have a few extra outs like a three-flush or a three-straight, just in case he actually has you beat. If you do have that hand, and the flop is something like a JD 8S 4H and he bets, you should raise, just as you would against a chauvinist. He usually won't have you beaten. He'll just keep raising anyway though.

The danger with the Macho man is that he isn't as likely to slowplay an overpair as is a chauvinist. He's just as likely to respond with aggression with overcards as with an overpair. That's why it's important to avoid getting involved without a little extra like suited cards against the macho type man.

The Difference

Stereotypes are a useful tool in developing strategy to exploit the mistakes of others. But, it's important to pay attention to the details and to think about the motivations of the players, not just their behavior. The behaviors of the stereotypical chauvinist and macho man seem similar, but when you look underneath and examine their motives you'll see the important distinction. The chauvinist really does disrespect women and thinks they are easily tricked. The macho man believes blind aggression is the key to success and actually doesn't behave that much differently whether playing against men or women. It's the chauvinist that will almost always try to be tricky and can be counted on to be weak-when-strong and strong-when-weak.