Kristen Bicknell’s on fire right now. She’s torching through the fields of the WPT World Online Championship, sitting pretty at the top of its Player Of the Championship Leaderboard with 131 points. She only beats out Gavin Cochrane (128 points) for first by a hair right now but it doesn't look like she'll be letting the gap close without a fight.
At the same time, she’s also taken down another WSOP bracelet after winning the 2020 WSOP Online $2,500 Six-Max No-Limit Hold’em. That meant beating out a field of 892 players and taking home $356,412 as well as the jewelry. So it should be a clear time to celebrate success coming to a talented young player whose been pushing chips for a full decade.
Not everyone has chosen to do so.
In a Tweet posted just after Bicknell’s win, Danielle Anderson called attention to a couple of representative comments from Instagram commenters.
“Is there proof that it was her playing?” asked one. “I wonder if Foxen was helping her?” asked another.
It is, in the minds of certain kinds of people, impossible for a woman to have succeeded in poker.
Nor was this the only example.
A short resume of Kristen Bicknell
For those new to poker, here's another reason the sexism is obnoxious. A short poker resume of Kristen Bicknell looks like this:
- $5,098,014 in live tournament cashes;
- 33 World Series Of Poker cashes, of which she final tabled 4, of which she braceleted 3;
- 2 World Poker Tour final tables; and—
- a decade of profitable cash game play live and online.
Most of her impressive track record came before William “Alex” Foxen came into her life. On the other hand most of his own, admittedly impressive, track record has come after the two pros got together.
To punch, or not to punch
So it is not surprising that Anderson — who is pretty done with the minimizing of female achievement — wants “to punch someone.”
Satisfying as that would be, it isn’t nearly as satisfying as Fara Galfond’s response to the Tweet. She confirms that she really has hit people for less.
“I was about to ask how we haven’t traded punching stories before but I think actually we have?? :) :)” was Anderson’s response. Can you share the story with the class, Galfond?
Bicknell herself has taken a more pacifist response, calling out the media for their Foxen based questions...
... and providing a final, positive, coda to the story.
In a long multi-part post, Bicknell, who is ever the class act, focuses on the support the poker community has given her.
She even managed to drop some advice for other women trying to break into the boy’s club atmosphere of the card table.
Which is all very well, just so long as she gets Galfond to spill the beans on who she punched.
