Hey guys!
My name is Ashley and I’m 22 year old female from the sunny Bay of Plenty and my passion and the biggest part of my life is, you guessed it, poker. I’m really looking forward to sharing my rambles with you guys! I’m hoping to provide an interesting and unique insight into the perspective of a female poker player and what it’s like routinely fighting battles against the boys that fill almost every other seat at the poker table.

I got into poker like many other kiwi players, through a pub poker league. What started out as a fun social pass time soon became my passion and consumed every thought and every minute of spare time! I had definitely caught the bug :]

I’ve been playing for almost 4 years now, and I’ve sucked for the most part! Ha ha. But I love to learn, and naturally wanted to get better at poker. I’ve always had a lot of knowledge but never applied it. In fact, it wasn’t until this year that I actually started winning at poker. I met a guy through a poker study group on skype who taught me the nuances of limit holdem (in before LOL minbet poker jokes) and within weeks I was crushing people heads up. I actually ended up ‘falling in love’ and going to Las Vegas to meet said guy, but I think I’ll save that story for a rainy day post, ha ha.

Playing so much heads up poker really took my game to a new level. For some reason heads up limit holdem (HULHE) just seems to click with me. In general, I’m seeing so many more turns and rivers and getting to showdown so much more often than the average NLHE player. This has given me the ability to finally understand relative hand strength, start applying accurate hand ranges to people and making some sick reads. LHE is truely the king of deathly thin value. I’ve now transferred my HU skills to 6max FLHE cash games, and I’m playing a lot there too with great success. Not only have my HU skills helped my LHE 6max game, they’ve also improved my NLHE game as well.

Most people’s reaction to me talking about limit is, how can you even make money at that game. My reply, because people f suck. Like, you have no idea. The edge in HULHE is sooo much greater than in NL. I currently have a winrate of 66% in my HU sit n gos, with an ROI of 18%. For those of you who aren’t sure, is not an easy feat. Contrary to popular belief, the matches don’t last that long either. HEM tells me my average match takes 30.2 minutes. Even I personally have had NL HUSNG’s last much longer than that.

I don’t want to talk too much about limit though, I’d like to dedicate a post/series of posts to it if I can. Over my short time of playing the game I’ve have learnt an astronomical amount and can provide an interesting and informative insight into the game if anyone is interested :]

Although I’m (almost) exclusively playing LHE at the moment, I have some experience in most other games. I’m a true poker nut and appreciate all different forms of poker. My personal favourite games are PLO, Badugi and Stud H/L. Of course I prefer to play HU in anything because there is so much pyschy juicy metagame it makes me drool.

Outside of poker, I’m a student. I’m currently majoring in finance here in Tauranga through the Uni of Waikato, but hoping to study extra murally next year through Massey so I can pick up a philosophy/psych major too. I guess I love punishing myself ha ha. It wasn’t until I recently watched an interview of Barry Greenstein on Poker Tube about the importance of balancing poker with life that I even had intentions of finishing my degree. What he said really hit home with me, so now I’m trying very hard to invest my time into things other than poker as well. I’ve started looking after myself a lot more and I’m joining a gym this week which I’m super excited about. As a few of you already know, I’ve entered a contest to become Victory Poker’s next sponsored pro. The contest is actually going to be an ‘Apprentice’ style TV show, so if I’m going to be on TV I want to look amazing! Ha ha.

If there is anything you guys want to know/want me to talk about it, please let me know. In fact, any feedback in general would be greatly appreciated. I’m very new to blogging and want to make this interesting for everybody :]

I think that’s enough for tonight! I could talk forever but I don’t want to bore you all to sleep!

Good luck at the tables

Ash x