IT is a game normally associated with millionaire playboys and the casinos of Las Vegas.
But a hairdresser from The Grange is about to take on the world's leading poker players in a challenge which promises a £1.4 million prize to the winner.
Mum Lucia Barrett will jet off to the celebrity paradise island of St Kitts later this month
to take part in the world's most glamorous tournament - the Caribbean Poker Classic.
The amateur card sharp, who owns a hairdressing salon in Ratcliffe Terrace, won her entry into the big game after becoming one of the growing army of women who play the traditionally male-dominated game of poker online.
The 45-year-old former beauty queen became hooked on the game after learning the rules on late-night TV.
Mrs Barrett, who lives with her husband Ian and 13-year-old daughter Antonia in Mortonhall Road, soon started testing her skills on Littlewoodspoker.com.
Two years later, she entered an open satellite tournament on the same site with around 200 people. Winning that qualified her for the "final table" of 12 competitors, where she scooped the top prize of a £5000 all-expenses-paid trip to St Kitts next Friday.
Mrs Barrett said: "Online poker is a fantastic, fun hobby and even though you always enter in the hope of winning I never dreamt I would get the ticket to St Kitts.
"Now I can hardly wait for the chance to test myself in the same tournament as the world's top names. Although poker is first and foremost a game of skill, you always have a chance, no matter who the opposition is.
"Even if I get knocked out of the tournament immediately, I will still be able to soak up the sunshine. Everyone says St Kitts is an absolute paradise."
The former St Augustine's High School pupil is no stranger to facing up to a challenge - by using beauty or brains. Back in 1975, when she was just 15, she won the title of Miss Craigton in a beauty contest while on holiday in St Andrews. And her card skills were honed as part of a husband and wife team which won the Scottish Mixed Teams Bridge Championship in 1999.
Normally, she joins low-stake poker games where players pay just a few pounds to compete for prizes of around £25,000.
Unlike other forms of gaming, players only pay their original stake money which buys them "chips".
Lucia added: "I didn't know much about poker until I saw it on late-night TV and enjoyed it so much I decided to give it a try. Ian suggested using a website because it was so easy to understand and use.
"I absolutely love it. I also think more and more women are taking part because everyone online has a nickname, meaning no-one can tell if you are male or female."
Lucia - who plays online as Cinderella - is now practising her blank poker expression to give her opponents no clues when she plays face-to-face opposition.
She added: "I've played face to face once before, at the Maybury casino in Edinburgh. I made the final table, so I must have been fairly inscrutable. But I'll definitely have to work on it because when I play online nobody can see me and I shout and pull faces."
Among the big names taking part in the main competition will be Scotland's only sponsored poker professional, Tony Chessa.
Mr Chessa, 32, who is sponsored by Littlewoodspoker.com, said: "I'm delighted Lucia will be coming along and I'm sure she will have a fantastic time. It is tremendous to see more women coming through because it helps consign the old sexist image to history."
The full article contains 642 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
