Ukip's Stuart Wheeler, did you forget about millionaire poker player Victoria Coren? Possibly the best known female poker player in the UK is Victoria Coren. In her tournament career (and bear in mind this is a player who plied most of her trade on the cash tables) she's won over $1.7m (£1m). Her single biggest win was £500,000 at the London leg of the European Poker Tour in 2006. This wasn't an insignificant tournament. EPT main events are made up of the very best poker players in the world - male and female. Some 398 players entered this tournament and stumped up £3,500 for the privilege. Then there's Vanessa Selbst. In a little over six years she's won over $7m, played in the biggest games across the globe and demolished player after player with her aggressive game. Selbst has two World Series bracelets - the most coveted prize in poker and something a lot of the very best male poker players are still trying to win. In the latest issue of PokerPlayer magazine she's cited as one of the top ten poker players in the world. Of course Ukip's Stuart Wheeler would say there are exceptions to every rule, but I could go on... Jennifer Harman, part of the old-school "Corporation" who played, and beat, Texan banker billionaire Andy Beale for tens of millions of dollars in Las Vegas in a crazy few months in 2004. You don't get much more typical "boardroom" than Andy Beale. Harman once said: "It probably helps me to be a woman. In general, most men don't think women can play. So, what often happens is that they try to run over me. They bluff their money off to me. I guess they see me as a meek little girl and think that I'm easily bluffed. And there's Annette Obrestad, the Norwegian superstar with close to $4m in tournament winnings. She won her first £1m in a tournament when she was 18 years-old. Kathy Liebert (close to $6m in winnings), Vanessa Rousso ($3.5m), Liv Boeree ($2.2m) ...the list of female poker players who've become millionaires thanks to the game is long and ever growing. There are countless female chess players (Hou Yifan, Judit Polgar among them) and bridge players (Sachie Pai) too. Just because they're in the minority, it doesn't make them less competitive. So what does it take to win a poker game? Poker is a game that requires a level of aggression to win consistently. But we're talking about measured aggression mixed with patience, the ability to separate yourself from your emotions, to be able to think through a problem logically, to recognise certain personality types and spot tells. So very akin to a boardroom, then (or at least, a successful boardroom). Often in poker - as we've seen in business - it's the alpha male who is unable to leave his ego behind that's made to look a fool at the table, whether at the hands of another man or a woman, simply because he can't back down from a situation where he perceives he's being taken advantage of. And anyway, doesn't the theory go that it was a few certain men in the boardroom that recently took the world to the edge of a financial precipice? Perhaps a more balanced board (and poker game) is exactly what the world needs. That Ukip has turned its attention to poker, and used it as an excuse to dismiss women in the same month that the party has been accused of being sexist is nonsense, unfortunate, and getting a little embarrasing. Earlier this month, Ukip's own Suzanne Evans tried to defend her party on all-things-women telling us not to confuse daft jokes with sexism. Will she and others recognise that this time, Ukip has gone too far? Mr Wheeler just doesn't know what he's talking about. David Woods launched PokerPlayer magazine in 2005, which became the UK's biggest selling poker title. He was editor for five years and is now editorial director of People Like You Publishing, which acquired PokerPlayer earlier this year.