Player Profile – Barbara Enright
January 30, 2008 - Deanna Goodson
At the age of 4, Barbara Enright learned to play five card draw. Her opponent was usually her older brother. She was so good at the game that she often made him cry. A truly hard worker, Enright often worked three jobs to support her family. At one point, she worked as a cocktail waitress, hair stylist and bartender at the same time. However, after entering her first card room to play in 1976, she began to make more money playing poker part-time than she did all her other jobs combined.
Barbara quit doing anything else professionally. Enright, the editor-in-chief of Woman Poker Player magazine, has three World Series of Poker bracelets. She earned her first in 1986 in the Women’s Seven Card Stud tournament. She followed that up in 1994 with a second bracelet in the same event. In 1996, she won her first and only open bracelet in Pot Limit Hold’em.
However, Enright’s biggest World Series of Poker achievement is, by far, her fifth place finish in the Main Event back in 1995. That’s the highest level any woman has reached to date in that tournament. She was beat badly with her pocket eights after Brent Carter called her with an unsuited 6,3…and won the pot, knocking her out.
A true trailblazer, Enright is the first woman to win two and then three bracelets at the WSOP. She was also the first lady to win an open event.
Married to poker author Max Shapiro, the limit specialist made it deep in the WSOP Main Event in 2005, cashing once again. Her aggression and her skill gave her the distinction of being the first (and so far) only woman inducted into the World Series of Poker Hall of Fame, a reward she earned in 2007.
Although Barbara prefers playing online these days – she’s held a sponsorship deal with Paradise Poker and uses the moniker "ItsOnlyMe" there – the lovely lady will be front and center at the 2008 Women in Poker Hall of Fame NLHE Tournament. She’s one of four women being inducted in the WIPHOF, a place she truly belongs.
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