Most people who walk into a poker room expect to be underestimated at some point. For Reyna, known online as Rocket Reyna, being underestimated has become a weapon. The 58-year-old from Seattle, Washington, has built a career at the tables that has earned her more than half a million dollars, and she says the men she plays against still assume she is easy money.
She never planned any of it. Reyna became one of the world’s highest-ranked female poker players almost by accident, and she has now explained how the game changed her life and how she keeps catching opponents off guard.
A game learned out of boredom
Reyna was 20 when she first started learning poker, too young to gamble legally in American casinos. She took it up because she and her then-boyfriend "had absolutely nothing in common", and the game gave them something to do together.
She spent her first year studying, reading books and rehearsing scenarios before she ever sat down for a real hand.
The preparation paid off quickly. "Once I turned 21, I wandered into the Excalibur in Vegas and doubled up my money in about 15 minutes while he lost all of his," she said. She has been hooked ever since.
It took about three years before she took tournaments seriously, and she now prefers them to cash games. In her view, the structure makes people slightly more predictable, and she will "take any edge".
Easy money, or so they think
Her biggest tournament payout is more than $96,000, and her combined winnings are above half a million dollars. Even so, she says the men around her tend to be "more dismissive than threatened".
After her biggest win, she says, the other players simply assumed she had been lucky or that the tournament was a soft one. She is often the only woman at the table.
Reyna says opponents also build a story about her. Because she is a woman, they assume she does not really understand the game and is an easy target. Being Asian, she adds, leads some to decide she is either very conservative and unprofitable, or a wild bluffer who fires at every hand.
Turning assumptions into chips
She uses both guesses against them. "I’ll bluff the players who think I’m tight, and I’ll play dumb and bet an absurd amount against the guys who don’t think I know what I’m doing," she said. Her focus is on how the others actually play, not on the script they have written about her.
Reyna describes poker as a historic "boys club" built on "decades of exclusion". She believes that is slowly changing, one seat at a time, and she is encouraged to see more women at the tables these days.
The game has also taught her to read people and stay calm under pressure, both at the table and away from it.
Today, poker has taken a back seat in her working life. Reyna says her OnlyFans page is now her main focus, and she has more than two million followers on Instagram. Even so, her record shows that a player who looks like an easy mark can turn out to be the most dangerous person at the table.
Image credit: Rocket Reyna
Source: The Mirror US
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