You’d be hard-pressed to argue that women’s sports isn’t enjoying a moment. Over the last month, Caitlin Clark, Paige Bueckers, Angel Reese and others have grabbed, controlled, and ultimately shined in the spotlight of NCAA Women’s March Madness, elevating their own profiles and that of their sport.
As WPT Voyage made its way through international waters Thursday night towards a beach party in Bimini, one of poker’s rising personalities had a moment of her own and ended up grabbing, controlling and shining in the spotlight of the WPT Voyage Ladies event.
Caitlin Comeskey outlasted 230 other entries in the WPT Voyage Ladies event to win $10,221 for her second career title and as she posed for a winner’s photo surrounded by her friends, she simply couldn’t stop smiling.
“It feels amazing. A WPT title is definitely so exciting. It’s only my second tournament win and it’s my second tournament win within a couple months,” Comeskey said. “I’ve really gotten serious about my MTT game and I called my shot. I said I was going to win this morning and I never really give up at any point.”
The win is just the latest gold star that Comeskey has added to her resume over the last six weeks and it’s not all about winning poker tournaments. In February, she took home her second Global Poker Award, this time for Best Short-Form Content Creator. Less than a week later, she secured her first career tournament win, taking down a RunGood Poker Series ladies event in Tunica, MS.
“It’s been a bit of a sun run. I’m excited. It’s tremendous. It’s the culmination of two, three years of really hard work of creating content, studying my game, and it’s really hard to balance both of those,” Comeskey said.
Getting in the lab means working through various GTO Wizard drills to help her understand and address the areas of her game that need improvement. She credits that work for helping her secure these two recent MTT wins, but admits it comes with an opportunity cost for her other passion.
“I haven’t made as much content recently when I have my poker results, but I’m hoping to make some stuff this summer,” Comeskey admitted. “Me and Nikki (Limo) are going to be filming more Aceholes episodes. I’m sure I’ll drop in with my Only Friends and make some short form content with poker.org maybe, or maybe there’ll be a new partner and the sky’s the limit.”
“So much is going right for me and I’m just so incredibly blessed and grateful.”
Comeskey’s win capped off five days of sailing and a 20 event festival schedule that anecdotally seemed to have a higher percentage of women playing than traditional land-based events. That wasn’t something that went unnoticed by those on board, including some who have taken on leading roles in finding ways to increase overall participation of women.
“The combination of beach, pool, sunshine, vacation mode, and poker is such a good one for women,” said AJ Rudolph, Vice President of the Women’s Poker Association, one of the leading advocacy groups for women in poker. “Otherwise it’s just … Vegas is Vegas, but this is vacation mode and if I bust out I can go sit by the pool. It’s great for couples, so I think there’s a lot more women I think in that regard.”
Comeskey also noticed the higher number of women in events all week and wasn’t surprised to see such a strong turnout in the ladies event. She also knows and appreciates the unique atmosphere and interactions in ladies events compared to open events, and enjoys leaning into that experience.
“It’s definitely a little bit friendlier. I think there’s more drinking more often because there are more recreational players per pro in the field probably on average,” said Comeskey. “I don’t know, I’m not a statistician. I didn’t see the numbers, but just playing them, that’s what it seems like.”
Along with her desire to create more content over the coming weeks and months, she’s also going to be playing poker all over the continent. She’ll travel to Council Bluffs, IA, Round Rock, TX, Atlantic City, NJ, and Montreal, Quebec, before she jumps in her car and drives from Austin, TX to Las Vegas for poker’s summer camp, the World Series of Poker. All of this in pursuit of more opportunities to grab, control and shine in the spotlights poker provides her.