Something fishy is going on in the WSOP ladies event

Yesterday I was watching some of the live updates from the World Series of Poker on the PokerNews feeds. One of the first ones about the ladies event was an announcement from WSOP Chariman Jeffrey Pollack to the effect that as long as he was in charge of things, there would be a ladies event (some people want to eliminate it), and that no men would be allowed to enter it (never mind antidiscrimination laws to the contrary).

Today, that report can no longer be found in the pages of Poker News updates of that event from yesterday. However, similarly defiant declarations from Pollack are reported by Michele Lewis as having occurred the night before:

Last night at the Queens of Heart dinner, Jeffrey
Pollack made two announcements:

1. As long as he is WSOP Commissioner there will be a Ladies
Event awarding a bracelet

2. No man would be allowed to register for the Ladies Event today

But at least one man did register for the tournament, and show up, only to be turned away at the last minute. Here's the incident as reported by Poker Listings.

Alan Jaffray showed up in a lovely dress hoping to have a go at the
bracelet. Jaffray's intent was to protest the sexist nature of the tournament
but was approached by WSOP Chairman, Jeffrey Pollack, shortly before the start. Mr. Pollack requested that Jaffray unregister himself from the tournament to preserve the integrity of the game and Jaffray obliged.

But on Jaffray's blog, he makes it pretty clear that, from his point of view, he was not "requested" to unregister, but was positively disallowed from play by Mr. Pollack:

I showed up at 11:30, met Patti, Sabyl, and a couple of friends at the
coffee shop, borrowed Patti's hat, had them adjust my necklace and apply makeup,
posed for photos with supportive and enthusiastic ladies at a couple of nearby
tables who were also playing that afternoon, walked to the Amazon room, and
promptly got pulled aside and kicked out by Jeffrey Pollack, Commissioner of the
World Series of Poker.

I'm honestly surprised by this - as I told Jeff, I've never heard of anyone
being denied entry to a poker tournament, including ladies events, on the basis
of sex. He claims that "in the 31-year history of the World Series of Poker
ladies event, no man has ever played." I asked if he was not concerned about the
sex discrimination aspects of this decision. "Not at all. Men are not a
protected class."

He talked about how they treat this event very seriously - "as do I, sir" -
and about the importance of protecting "the integrity of the game." I'm not sure
what my penis has to do with the integrity of the game. He asked if I could
understand his point of view. "I don't accept it, and I don't believe it's
right. But you're the boss, and if you say I can't play, then I can't
play.

"I'm disappointed and annoyed that I can't play, since I expected to have
more fun in this event than perhaps any other in the WSOP, and I'd really love
to win the bracelet. C'est la vie. I don't know whether or not they have the
legal right to discriminate in this way, but I'm not going to make a big fuss. I
don't care enough to fight it, and I have too much to lose to risk Harrah's
blacklisting me and preventing me from playing future WSOP events.

Maybe I'll have better luck in the WSOP Negro World Championship. Oh, wait,
they don't have that. They wouldn't even dream of running that. Hmmmmm.

At least I got a nice outfit out of the experience. Photos later.

Jaffray confirmed the same point in a story and interview by Jennifer Newell for PokerWorks:

I never got to my seat. As I was approaching the blue section,Jeffrey
Pollack pulled me aside and informed me that I would not be allowed to play.

But perhaps the strangest part is that it appears there is a man not only playing in the event, but among the chip leaders at the end of Day 1. Here's what is being reported on the N.Y. Times "Freakonomics" blog:

Last year my wife Jeannette played in the ladies event at the World Series
of Poker. As I wandered around the poker room, I noticed a few of the
contestants sported very un-ladylike goatees. On closer inspection, they were
definitely men.

I asked around, and it turns out that the casino technically cannot exclude
men from participating in the ladies event if they want to. Every year a few men
enter.

Unless there is a case of mistaken identity, it looks like a man is
threatening to win the ladies event at this year’s World Series of Poker. After
one day of play, the starting field of over 1,000 has been whittled down to just
61 remaining players.

Here the blogger, Steven D. Levitt, refers to Hoa Nguyen, 7th in chips going into Day 2. He also posts this link to Nguyen's player profile on the official WSOP web site. Dude looks like a dude to me, all right.

(Caveat: Since there are many events going on simultaneously, I consider it possible that he unknowingly crossed the border from one event to another, and thus was seeing men in an open event. However, if that were the case, you wouldn't really expect him to stumble upon a table of eight women and one man, which is kind of what is implied in his report. Remember, too, that his observation was from last year, not this year, so it's relevant to the question of whether men have entered the ladies event in the past, but not relevant to whether any men are playing this year.)

So here are my questions (and I'm deliberately omitting the larger question of whether there should be women's-only events; that's a matter of opinion, and I'm just focusing on questions of fact):

1. Is Levitt right that at least a few men have entered the ladies WSOP event in past years, or is Pollack right that that has never happened?

2. Did Pollack, in fact, say something about no men being allowed to enter the event in his introductory remarks to the crowd, as I remember PokerNews reporting just after it happened? (I grant the possibility that I was web surfing somewhere else and thus it came from some other source--perhaps I'm even confusing what I read from Michele Lewis with something that came from the PN live feeds. But I feel about 90% confident that I'm remembering it accurately.)

3. If PN did make such a report, why has it been deleted?

4. Is the Hoa Nguyen reported as one of the current chip leaders actually the same person as in the WSOP player profile, and is the accompanying photo (which is clearly of a male-type person of the masculine gender) correctly matched to the player?

5. If Nguyen and/or other men were allowed to play, why was Jaffray denied entry (assuming that his report of being disallowed--rather than just asked to withdraw--is correct)?

6. If Nguyen and/or other men are playing, why was that fact ignored in PokerNews's 12 pages of coverage yesterday? Similarly, was not Jaffray's incident considered "poker news" by that reporting organization?

7. Was Jaffray asked not to participate, as PokerListings claims, or was he actually prevented from playing, as he says? If the latter, why does PokerListings say otherwise? Did they, perhaps, get their information from Pollack, without asking Jaffray for his version of events? If Pollack is the source for their report, did he lie about the interaction with Jaffray? If so, why?

8. Does PokerNews's exclusive contract for live reporting from the WSOP include an explicit or implicit agreement that they will suppress stories that the WSOP would, for whatever reason, prefer them not to report on (perhaps because of being too unpleasant or controversial or showing the WSOP management in an unfavorable light)?

If I am able to get definitive answers to any of these questions, I'll post what I learn in an addendum to this post. For now, I'll just say that something smells really rotten here.


Addendum:

I wrote the above before making my usual daily rounds of poker blogs. If I find that others are discussing the situation, I'll add a note about it here.

I see that Wicked Chops Poker has a brief post and a photo of a person whose sexual identity is not immediately obvious. They say they confirmed that it's a "dude," but given WCP's penchant for tongue-in-cheek reporting, I don't know how much stock to put in that claim.

Here's what Pokerati reported, in relevant part:

The ladies event brings out all sorts … supposedly one man entered, and one
man left. Because the WSOP wasn’t gonna get themselves into anything resembling
a civil rights and discriminatory mess, anyone who stood in line for Event #15
would be allowed to buy in. However, when only one man did this, Nolan Dalla
went up to him and politely asked him not to play — refunded his buy-in as he
obliged.

No names given, so I don't have any idea how to mesh that information with the other reports discussed above.

Addendum, June 10, 2008

The Freakonomics post cited above has now been amended to say that "reliable sources" have confirmed that the Hoa Nguyen this was indeed a case of mistaken identity, and the person by that name in the ladies event is (A) female and (B) not the same one as linked to in the WSOP site bio and photo. The other questions remain, however.