Ladies (Poker x Tech)

Poker and Tech are two sectors that historically see low female representation.

Where the Space Race served to demonstrate superiority between two countries at odds during the Cold War, our solution uses Poker as a global platform to serve advancements in feminism and gender equality in Tech.

1. Our solution is to extend MIT's annual PokerBots challenge to include a separate Ladies Event with prize pool driven by firms looking to increase their female employee makeup. Open entry to all females globally.

2. For men in the early 2000's, poker was the everyman's rags-to-riches story. But beyond the run of cards lies probability, statistical analysis, resource management, and pattern recognition that dictate high-level poker decisions applicable to executive decision-making in tech and business. By exposing women to poker, they can learn and apply game mechanics, strategies and decision-making to principles in computer programming (conditional actions, artificial intelligence), mathematics (probability, statistics) and finance/trading (data analysis, spotting trends) and foster the means and capability to compete globally with their male counterparts.

3. If scaled, we hope to be able to measure a significant increase in female representation in Poker & Tech as a result of participation in this ongoing series. The World Series of Poker releases an annual report of participants in its $10,000 Main Event (mostly men) and Tech would be reliant on global job market reports and independent surveys.

The problem is a lack of female representation in both Poker & Tech for reasons that include male-driven intimidation and few avenues to improve individual skill sets without becoming discouraged by an often times, toxic and unwelcoming environment.

By providing a Ladies Only Pokerbot event, we create a starting point where women can learn to appreciate the game, play competitively amongst their peers, and eventually build up confidence in their own abilities to compete against men who have historically dominated the field.

In theory, change is when preconceived notions about a gender's abilities are turned on its head and when equality in capability becomes an assumed norm. 

In Tech, women are often overlooked for advancement and leadership opportunities. 
In Poker, women are generally underestimated at the table and classified as softer marks that can be bullied and pushed around. 

Change is realized when women's tech accomplishments are celebrated, and their presence at the poker table is feared.

Our solution aims to empower and increase female participation in Poker and Tech. Society and corporations all benefit when male and female talent are both regarded as equally capable in intellectual aptitude. 

For our pilot deployment, we propose leveraging MIT's annual PokerBots challenge to include a separate Ladies Event tournament similarly to how the World Series of Poker has its own Ladies Event in Las Vegas.

The extension will be socially enhanced with female mentorships in areas of: professional poker playing, computer programming, mathematics and finance/trading. 

Track participants in MIT's Ladies Event Pokerbot challenge to annual World Series of Poker player profile reports year over year; also check 3rd party poker news reports. - Increase women competing in poker.

Individually track participants in MIT's Ladies Event Pokerbot challenge to their personal job advancement by conducting check-ins and surveys; also check 3rd party job market reports. - Increase women competing in tech.

We're unconventionally using a competitive game (Poker) where women are heavily underrepresented to help advance their standing in an industry (Tech) where women are also heavily underrepresented.

Poker is a social game where decisions are made from human tells and reads. 

Moving to tech, Pokerbots are programmed to make correct poker decisions by analyzing large sums of collected data to deduce its own set of tells and reads that inform their actions.

How these bots come to that decision based off a game of incomplete information is based entirely off the ingenuity of its human makers.

Solution will be deployed through school clubs, networking and targeted online marketing strategies.

Minimum requirement is an internet connection and access to an educational tech network.

Tiffany is a professional poker player and Elise is a PHD candidate in mathematics. Both intend to continue these pursuits with the intention of mentoring and educating the next generation of female talent. This would be a non-profit endeavor for both participants.

Lack of cooperation from 3rd parties.

In this instance our success is heavily dependent on MIT's willingness to host a separate Ladies Event pokerbot tournament.

We'd also like to promote this at Defcon to tap into existing hyper-aggressive female tech talent, so their participation would be helpful as well.

https://www.pokernews.com/tours/wsop/wsop-2017/event-70-ladies-championship/day2/chips.177614.htm

Grow female-driven network of poker players and tech gurus.

Women's network in poker.

Whoever else is using the poker angle to tap into women in tech.