poker-players-from-canada

"With my first Twitch stream, like 60% of it was just people trying to flirt with me and chat, or people just commenting on my appearance the entire time. They didn't care about the game play at all."

"Sometimes it's the people who are your closest friends that think females are genetically worse at chess. I've often heard comments like, 'you're playing the girl, it's an easy win.' It gets in the back of your head when you've heard it for so long, and it messes with your sense of confidence. Maybe you start doubting yourself a little bit more, but you just try to keep fighting those thoughts."

"The growth of chess has been so healthy on Twitch, and it's one of those games that is never going to die out. Chess has really survived the age of time. So I think it's gonna survive on Twitch as well."

"Women in chess is not something very common. It has taken very long to get to the point where we're starting to change the stereotype that women are not genetically inferior to men at playing chess."

"It doesn't matter what their social or economic background is — it's very cheap to play, and you can get good just by practicing. Kids from rural areas can play kids from private schools. It develops confidence and the ability to work with logic."

"It's crazy to me to have this kind of support and this kind of viewership online for chess. Chess has always been a passion of mine, but it was never something that was popular. It was never something I would have imagined would have grown to what it is today."

"As I learned more about veganism, and animal farms and the way animals were treated, it just disgusted me to the point where I could never imagine eating animals again."

"You need to understand that everything you do at the poker table, conveys information. You can't be all loosy goosy, eating a sandwich, or checking your phone."

"In 2000, I became a vegetarian. The guys in poker mocked me. There was this idea that "real men eat meat" and they'd eat piles of crap around the table, like mounds of dead animals every hour. … I became vegan in 2006 when I started taking healthy eating seriously. … The other players are a lot more accepting now, they embrace my veganism! … Poker has changed, in the past, high profile players were obese, now they're fit. They've swapped their moobs for pecs. Players now are educated people, they're smart, they do the research … Although my veganism started out absolutely about health, it's also become about the environment and animal cruelty. The way animals are treated and the conditions are atrocious. They're force fed steroids, the chickens are de-beaked. You end up eating sick, diseased chickens because they're living in shit. It's like a holocaust on animals."