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Jennifer Newell, @WriterJen on Twitter, is a freelance writer who frequently covers the world of poker for Poker Scout, PokerStars Women, and others. Though she doesn’t play much herself, she loves the many colorful personalities and fascinating stories of the people who do. She’s also passionate about civil rights and combating the sexism she sees in the poker world, the focus on female players’ appearances rather than their poker chops, and the myth that poker is already an all-inclusive game. We also talk about how she makes it as a freelance writer (hint: you can hire her!).
0:30 Hello and welcome
6:50 Strategy: making nuanced reads; playing top pair out-of-position in a three-bet pot
45:21 Interview: Jennifer Newell
Strategy
$2/$5 NLHE, Hero is in SB with $550.
UTG+1 opens to $15, MP calls, CO raises to $35, Button calls, Hero calls, BB calls, UTG+1 calls, MP calls
Flop ($210) Ad Jh Qc. Checks to Button who bets $110, Hero calls, everyone else folds.
Turn ($430) 9c. Hero checks, Villain bets$130, Hero shoves for $400, Villain calls with QT.
Thanks for doing this interview, I think this is a really interesting topic. How we perceive things visually informs so much of our behavior as humans.
But I have to say, I was turned off to the interview when she answered Andrews ‘devils advocate’ question. Placing blame on someone for doing their job well is, in my opinion, such a gross oversimplification of the topic. After that response I could only hear a blindly righteous crusader who hadn’t thought things through all that carefully.
Just my opinion, but again I love when you guys ‘branch out’ a bit.
I find myself agreeing with Preston in that this was a very interesting interview topic-wise.
One thing that always fascinates me is contradictions, and the more “principled” someone is, the closer I tend to listen. If I was interviewing Jennifer I might ask how they reconcile turning down Ayres while working for Stars? Both are accused of various misdeeds, right?
Is sexism the “Trump Card” for ethics?
For myself, I am much more troubled by Cosmopolitan , a magazine purportedly for women, splashing anorexic “beauty ideals” in cleavage revealing outfits than in a magazine targeting 15-35 yr old males with an occasional glamour shot cover.
Selbst I think said it best when she said “of all the issues to focus on, this is not a priority”. (Rough recollection / paraphrase)
Which
No reason to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. It seems like the more outspoken a person is about his/her principles, the eagerer others are to point out any kind of apparent contradiction, as though that invalidates the attempt to be principled.
To be clear, Selbst (and I) was saying that as far places to be concerned about gender equality, the poker world isn’t the highest priority. I put a similar question to Carlos Welch, though, and his answer was (also paraphrasing) “this is the world I know/occupy, so it’s where I focus my efforts.” I don’t want to speak for her, but Newell probably rightly believes that she can have more of an impact pointing out sexism in the poker world, where she is a known and respected figure, than in Cosmo magazine.
If you give folks the benefit of the doubt, even Ayres himself probably figures he has principles. I mean he has been very “in your face” with the US government about his stand. I find myself easily liking him as much as Stars. But then I am partial to outlaws and pirates.
Everyone has their contradictions, but not everyone points to others and says, “NO, not YOU, because…..”
I do not think that is letting perfect be the enemy of the good. I think it seems somewhat ‘righteous’. THAT is what I noticed.
I mean, Newell works in an industry that operated in a grey area of the law since its inception. Does a glamour shot really trump all of the other concerns there? And for all the live play, land based magazines, did they not accept advertising money from Ultimate Bet/Full Tilt etc? How about the websites that employ her? Where is their money coming from?
It seems that as long as something falls within the bounds of what I consider acceptable, (and I find online poker totally acceptable) that the how’s and why’s it is possible is okay to overlook?
which
I
one other thing I would ask of anyone criticizing a business about their marketing actions:
What would you do if that was YOUR money at stake? I mean, principles can be very easy to have when it is not you on the line. (Newell touched on this herself about her self censorship) But how about Bluff having a reliable database of what covers sell best? Is another anonymous live/online/tournament grinder face on the cover really what will sell? When I see a glamour shot on a poker mag, or the endless images of “Beauty” paraded on various women’s mags, I am more aggravated at myself/society for buying into this than I am at a business for giving me what I collectively ‘want’.
Politicians are not ugly, CEO’s are taller than the general population, and starlets last as long as they are beautiful. I do not blame the companies that realize this. I blame us.
which
Whether or not something is worse or relatively less important than something else is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Better to focus on internal inconsistencies in her responses. Compare her response to Nate’s question (regarding whether someone doing their job to make money bears responsibility for what she deplores) with her response to Andrew’s later question about whether the women who pose for/agree to such articles bear any/some responsibility). In fairness, she does say “almost as much” but then unfortunately hedges her answer by saying that people have to make a living and so she doesn’t want to begrudge any of them. This same hedging was not employed when she was evaluating the moral responsibility of males who work in this industry.
To respond to Which’s rhetorical question: perceived sexism is indeed a trump card that inflames emotions (understandably so) and thus prevents the sort of intensive back-and-forth debate on two competing sides of the argument. I felt that I could hear, especially in Andrew’s questions, an interviewer who was on the verge of asking a tough question a couple of times, but ultimately declined.
Related reading: http://www.economist.com/news/international/21585012-sportswomen-are-beginning-score-more-commercial-goalsbut-they-still-have-lot-ground
mwalsh, Andrew,
I always wonder if I am being mean-spirited when I post these things about guests. They give their time, they open themselves up, and then some anonymous poster comes in and points to some comment they make.
So, thank you Jennifer for coming on and giving us some insights into your life.
But I also can’t help myself when these same folks draw lines in the sand. My beach gets washed often by the changing tides. As I get older, I find I don’t even necessarily agree with myself (of opinions held in times gone by). I would have appreciated a little more wiggle room in her stance, that is all.
For sure, exercise your principles when you can. Good practice for when it really counts.
which
For myself–I think you post in a reasonable and helpful way, even if I’ve often disagreed with what you’re saying.
I do think Newell’s position is somewhat less absolute than you might be portraying it as. When I asked her about the WSOP she went out of her way to (at least partially) defend the brand, which I don’t think she would have done if her position was that nobody should ever use a woman’s looks to sell a product when there’s another reasonable way to do so.
FWIW I also agree with you about the difficulty of finding the right “line in the sand.” But my own conclusion is that disputes about an inch here or there tend not to be very interesting, not that there’s something subjective or quixotic about trying to figure out roughly where the line is and which things are well on one side or the other.
An example that’s in the news these days: it seems pretty clear to me that a NFL team calling itself the “Redskins” is _either_ totally fine _or_ totally not fine. Sure, you have to weigh various values and considerations, and probably there will be uncertainty about where to draw various lines, but it seems pretty obvious to me that once you work out the ethics of the situation, either the tradition/”just a name” argument wins or the “what is wrong with you, using a racial slur for a nickname?!” argument wins. Since this example contains such extreme manifestations both of the tradition and of the badness of the name, it’s pretty unlikely that small changes in line-drawing algorithms will change one’s view of this. (Not that I expect anyone to care what I think, but I’m in the change-the-name camp.)
I like those last two paragraphs a lot 🙂
Why is beauty less valued than intelligence? Honest question – not being flippant
Rant2112,
I don’t think it is. And I don’t even think it’s close 🙂
which
Great interview with Newell. I was not aware of her writing previous to this podcast. I thank you for the introduction. Im for her a 1000%
I am sensitive to Andrew’s concern that strong opinions draw strong rebuttals. Here is what I liked about the interview with Jennifer.
Regardless of the political topics, I gained a respect for Jennifer. She fell into a job, developed a passion for it, and turned it into a vocation. She operates as a self-employed or independent practitioner. There are very few things in life more praiseworthy.
Gentlemen,
I’ll preface this by stating that I’m a big fan of your podcast, and that I realize you have both always been clear about your desire to take on topics outside the poker mainstream. With that transparent disclaimer out of the way, I must say I found this podcast utterly enraging. Literally. I was yelling at my steering wheel during the interview. I think my biggest problem is that when you discuss these bigger socio-political topics, there is really no dissenting opinion. At the risk of generalizing, I think it is fair to say that both of you are on the more liberal end of the political spectrum. As a result, when you have on a guest with particularly liberal views (and in this case, one whose liberal views are the basis upon which she was selected for the podcast), the interview becomes a bit of an echo chamber. Several posts above outline flaws or inconsistancies in Jennifer’s reasoning on various points. What discouraged me is that neither of you asked her a single difficult question to challenge her questionable positions. Instead, it was softball after softball, so much so that I felt it bordered on intellectual dishonesty. The only thing that saved the entire discussion in my opinion was Andrew’s acknowledgement, literally in the last sentence of the podcast, that some people could hold opposing viewpoints as ardently as Jennifer holds hers. Bravo! While I cannot think of an instance where a more conservative political viewpoint was discussed on the podcast as a counterweight to the hosts’ opinions, I do not doubt for a moment that you are both inherently reasonable and would listen to the opposition and consider it rationally. Thanks for 46 excellent, if occasionally maddening, episodes.
Tony–
First, thanks for the feedback. As always, negative feedback is the most valuable.
Second, sorry the show didn’t live up to your expectations / our standards. Honestly I thought that I failed a bit as an interviewer. I tried to ask questions that pushed her a little bit, but had a hard time generating discussion with them. I still believe now, as I did then, that the important/interesting question isn’t so much why there’s crappy sex-driven poker media, but why that media is also the most prominent stuff in the industry / why there’s so little _else_. But I had a hard time expressing that eloquently and engaging our guest in that line of thought. (To my mind it’s a bit less troubling that there are magazines about “the 25 hottest chicks in soccer” or whatever, just because there are major soccer-media outlets that don’t do that stuff, at least exclusively.)
So I hope you’ll believe me that the “echo chamber” stuff was less a desire to throw her “softball after softball” but really just a failure of skill (on my part) to engage some of her thought processes in the way I was hoping to. I’m not sure what the “dissenting opinion” here would be… perhaps that it’s OK to have such media, or that it’s not so bad? To be honest I think the line of questioning I just described, that I did try to pursue, is at least a shot in that direction, though I certainly didn’t do a great job of it.
I definitely agree that there wasn’t a lot of discussion about whether her approach to poker writing is basically justified or ethically correct, but that’s largely (a) because I at least don’t think it’s terribly interesting to discuss whether objectifying women is OK–not because there’s no debate to be had but because the likeliest result is just to rehash the same arguments we’ve all heard a million times, and (b) yes, out of a sort of professional politeness–quite generally we interview guests with a sort of willingness to take their point of view for a while. Sometimes this has made me quite uncomfortable/frustrated, and I certainly don’t think my judgment during these situations has always been correct.
Third, in case you care about my political views, probably your guess at them is not completely inaccurate, but: I think the New York Times, Slate, Huffington Post, Slate, and NPR are usually not worth reading / listening to; I’m rabidly pro-GMO, generally against raising minimum wages, against many forms of gun control, and often skeptical that labor unions do more good than harm; I thought at the time that Romney was a better candidate for the Presidency than Obama; I’m a fan of Milton Friedman, Tyler Cowen, and many other decidedly non-liberal intellectual figures; etc.
So I hope you’ll believe that my various failures as an interviewer are just failures of skill, not an attempt to champion some cookie-cutter liberal worldview.
(Please note that, as always, I’m speaking only for myself here. I don’t know what Andrew thinks about all of this.)
Nate, I would never accuse either of you of being cookie-cutter. As I said, the one thing that is perfectly clear from every episode is that both you and Andrew strive to be rational, and I believe that you take that goal seriously. And I am overjoyed to read the list of rational 😉 views set forth in your reply. There may be hope for you yet. However, I am still comfortable postulating that anyone who uses the term “heteronormative” three times in a single episode is slightly to the left of me on the spectrum. Granted, Anne Coulter is probably slightly to the left of me, so there is plenty of room there. I understand that you are not looking to “rehash the same arguments,” but keep in mind that (1) many of your listeners are not on the leading edge of ethical debate like the two of you and may not have had the same level of exposure to those dialogues; and (2) oftentimes, we’ve heard the same arguments a million times because they are valid arguments. Much of Jennifer’s thesis on the podcast can legitimately be reduced to “those aren’t the kind of stories I want to read, I don’t find them interesting, so poker publications shouldn’t run them.” While I suspect that much of that was just inartfully stated, her argument as presented has no more logical value than her opponents’. If I don’t find her articles interesting, does it necessarily follow that poker magazines shouldn’t run them? It just strikes me that her entire position needs to be evaluated against its polar opposite. It may help her understand why, as Andrew remarked, some people hold opposing views just as fervently. End rant.
Thanks for the kind words, Tony, and for the feedback. In hopes of not coming across as overly defensive, I’ll start by saying that we’ve, rightfully I think, gotten more criticism of this interview than any others that we’ve done. There are some things I wish we’d done differently and that I hope we will do differently should we have similar guests on in the future.
That said, I don’t think it’s quite right to say that “neither of you asked her a single difficult question.” I did ask her why she gave a pass to the women who appeared in the ads for “just trying to earn a living” when the same could probably be said about the people producing the ads. Admittedly she didn’t have a great answer, and we didn’t press her harder on it, but I’m not sure that would have been productive. The audience hears the question, they hear her response, and they can form their opinions based on that. My objective as an interviewer isn’t really to debate with a guest until one of us relents.
It’s true that I invited her on the show because we share at least the same general position on this issue, and the sense that I have is that there’s a wide swath of the poker community that simply accepts that this is the way things will always be or that it’s just normal or not a problem. Because that seems to be the prevailing baseline assumption, I’m more concerned with highlighting and giving a forum to arguments that challenge it. As Nate says, I think the general outline of the debate is going to be very familiar already and not something that needs to be rehashed. Basically the burden of proof is on the party pushing for change, and you as an audience member can decide whether or not you’re convinced of the case that she’s made.
FWIW I’m generally happy to continue a discussion or engage in a debate here in the comments section (though the next two weeks will be tricky because of WCOOP consuming so much of my time), so if you have arguments you’d like to voice, I’d be interested to hear them and will do my best to respond.
Thanks again,
Andrew
Thanks, Andrew. You should focus on making money in the WCOOP rather than debating me on this issue. I will continue to lurk here, waiting for the next podcast wherein I sense even a hint of bias or logical fallacy, at which point I will reactivate the rant machine. Thanks again to you both, not only for solid content, but for the willingness to engage your audience.