Clonie Gowen
Clonie Gowen was once Miss Teen Oklahoma, and with her good looks, she sometimes looks out of place at the poker table. However, her skill puts her right up there with her male competitors. Clonie Gowen has always thought of herself as one of the guys.
When she was growing up in Oklahoma, Gowen played high school sports. She was on a basketball team that won the state championship, and she was also on her high school's track team, being ranked seventh in the entire state.
Playing poker competitively has helped Clonie Gowen turn into the aggressive player she is today. She first picked up the game as a teen; her boyfriend's father taught her how to play. When she decided to become a professional, she did it with her mother's blessing. She began to play in cash games in Louisiana before she got her big break- a tenth-place finish in a WPT event. That success was followed by an invitation to play in the WPT's Ladies' Night. She beat some of the best female players, and won $25,000.
Clonie Gowen used her celebrity to her advantage, appearing on shows like the Full Tilt Poker Pro Showdown and Battle of the Sexes. She and Phil Helmuth are the only players to have won Poker After Dark three times. Gowen's other achievements are a third place ath Las Vegas' Full Tilt Poker Championship and a fourth place at the Five Diamond World Poker Classic. However, she has had criticism because she's never had a major tournament win.
That changed in 2008, when she won a no-limit hold 'em event at the Bellagio, earning over $400,000. That win put her over a million dollars in tournament earnings and silenced her critics. Today, Gowen juggles her job with the raising of her two kids in Dallas, Texas. She is also an instructor at the WPT's boot camp. She is sponsored by Full Tilt Poker, along with Chris Ferguson, Gus Hansen, and Phil Ivey.