QUEENS OF THE FELT HIGHLIGHT THIS WEEK

It has become a tradition at the World Series of Poker to make guesses not only on who the Last Woman Standing in the WSOP Main Event will be, but just how far along in the tournament they will get. Last year, we were teased with the prospect of not one, but two women at the final table all the way up to the final hours of Day 7 play.

Tonight on ESPN, the Day 5 coverage continues and spotlights the final three women with a chance to best the deep runs of Gaelle Baumann and Elisabeth Hille in last year’s tournament. Bracelet winner Annette Obrestad and Aussie poker phenom Jackie Glazier are familiar faces to many poker fans, while Beverly Lange is, as she describes it, just a gal from Texas who likes to play poker now and then.

This week’s new episodes of WSOP coverage on ESPN might have you thinking that Lange is playing a little coy. She and her two professional female compatriots are holding their own against the overwhelmingly male competition as the field falls under 100 players.

Tonight from 9:30pm-11pm ET (please note that this week’s coverage is only 90 minutes, as opposed to the standard two hours of coverage), the trio of women and other notables still in the hunt like 2001 WSOP Main Event Champ Carlos Mortensen, Yevgeniy Timoshenko, Jonathan Jaffe, Noah Schwartz, Jim Collopy, and Steve Gee make the push towards Day 6. As the field dwindles and the Amazon Room empties, players start to realize there is truly a chance they could be one of the nine returning to the felt in November.

This week’s focus on the ladies caps off a strong summer for the women of poker. Back in 2007, it was none other than Obrestad who became the first woman to win an open No Limit Hold’em bracelet. It took six years before someone else repeated the feat. First, Dana Castaneda became the first woman to win an open No Limit Hold’em bracelet event on American soil. Days later, Loni Harwood made it two wins for the women with a record-breaking victory in one of the final prelim events of the summer. Now that Obrestad has company, perhaps she can be the first to make it two in this year’s Main Event?

To find out how Obrestad and the other ladies fare tonight, be sure to tune into ESPN at 9:30pm ET tonight and catch the all-new episodes. Tweet at us or use the hashtag #WSOPonESPN to tell us who you are rooting for to make the final table.

While we patiently wait for Tuesday’s new episode, here is a clip to tide you over. The women of poker can be very tricky on the felt. You know what else is tricky? The starting hand of ace-queen. The ESPN cameras ask this year’s Main Event players how they play this often overrated starting hand: