The problem, in a nutshell

Read from the bottom up here:

Those tweets were soon followed by this series of replies, all from one dude asshole:  

So a female poker player reports a session in which the sexual harassment was so thick that, in recounting it, she even forgot to mention the rape threat--and a male poker player is willing to go on the record publicly telling her that she has no right to play without being harassed, that she should "get over it," that she's being a "baby," that harassing "the new girl is not over the line," that she shouldn't "whine about it," that if she's being harassed she should "leave" and/or "man up," that "nobody cares" about her harassment, that her harassment is "Part of the game" and "standard," that she's being "2 sensitive," that surely what she perceived as harassment was said "in gest [sic]" (despite him not having been there), and that her complaints are "crap that doesn't matter." 

I think there are relatively few men who would lay on the sexual harassment at a poker game to the point that somebody like Cate Hall--who strikes me as quite evidently tough-minded and resilient--would take to Twitter to denounce it. But I think there are a very, very large number of male poker players who share one or more of Andrew's reactions to it: It's part of the game, it's not over the line, it doesn't matter, she should respond by leaving or enduring it without objection. 

IMHO, it is the latter group, rather than the former, who make this such a difficult problem to eradicate. If it were only handful of obnoxious jerks who were quickly, reliably, and sternly rebuked and shunned for their crass behavior by everybody else at the table (and, not incidentally, ejected from the game by the poker room staff), it would soon be extinguished. It's the fact that women end up having to deal with the ill-bred mouth-breathers all alone--with the silence of others constituting tacit approval--that makes their conduct so damaging. 

Thanks, Andrew, for encapsulating the problem so perfectly. 

(Please insert here all the standard caveats that as a male I can't know what it feels like, shouldn't be mansplaining, etc.) 

ADDENDUM: At first I couldn't figure out who "Andrew" was. But then it occurred to me to do a Google image search on the photo he uses on his Twitter account. The photo is of an Andrew Liporace; see here. Hendon Mob info is here. I assume, but do not know, that that's who we're dealing with here. 

Sexism

I'm about a week late getting around to reading it, but this essay by Cate Hall (whom I had never heard of before) is perhaps the most thoughtful, articulate statement I've read on the problem of sexism in poker.

http://www.pokerwomennews.com/opinion-cate-hall-on-pokers-woman-problem/

I noticed how women are treated at poker tables as soon as I moved to Vegas and started playing regularly. Though I never attempted a formal tally, my impression was that often a majority of things said by men to women during a poker game (excluding those immediately necessitated by game play) were things that could not and/or would not have been said if she were male. That is, they either were explicitly about her sex, alluded to her sex, or were dependent for meaning on the fact that the person being addressed was female.

Look, I'm not the most sensitive, politically correct of souls. But the cumulative effect was sufficiently sledgehammerish that one would have to be a troglodyte not to notice it. Confronting it directly is problematic for a host of social and poker-strategic reasons. However, I decided early on that I could at least avoid contributing to it.

So I set in place a mental filter on my conversation. When I was thinking of saying something to a female player, I'd stop and consider whether my comment or question was in that category I described above--the sort of thing that I could not or would not say to a male player in the same situation. By lifelong habit, I already heavily filter and pre-censor my speech in public settings anyway, so it was not particularly difficult to add another layer.

Of course there are common-sense exceptions, such as responding to something a woman has herself brought up that falls into that category. And I don't claim to be 100% perfect in following my own rule. But I am pretty good about it, and can recommend the practice to my male readers.

You're not individually obligated to clean up the mess along the highways, but you are individually obligated not to make it worse by throwing your Big Gulp cup out the window as you drive. Similarly, you don't have to be the sexist-speech police at the poker table, but you should take care not to add to it. As Ms. Hall makes clear, any one remark you make to a woman may feel to you innocuous, and may objectively be innocuous, but there is still a cumulative effect on a woman of her gender being the subject or cause for much of what is being said to her. I am not capable of experiencing that as a woman would, but I am capable of imagining it. It's sufficient unpleasant just in imagination that it makes me not want to be even a minor contributor--especially when it's so easy to avoid.

A tangential confession: One of the summers (probably 2009) that I was doing some work for PokerNews on WSOP reporting, I was of necessity following the series much more closely than I typically do, and began noticing that there seemed to be an unusual number of very attractive women having success. I started going through the PokerNews photo archives for the series and picking out pictures to put together into a post on my own blog, titled something awful like "The hot women of the WSOP." I had worked on it for an hour or two when I started to get a sense of general creepiness about what I was doing, and stopped. The next day I opened the draft post again, looked at what I had put together and thought, "What the hell is wrong with you?" I deleted it forthwith. I was sufficiently embarrassed that I had ever thought that to be a good idea that I believe I have never even told anybody I had done it--until now. Well, at least I had the good sense to abort it when I did.

Old dog learns new trick

I was playing at the Orleans recently when a woman joined the table in the seat next to me. First thing she did when her chips came was jam one under the rail and hook the strap of her purse around it.

I've seen devices made for this same purpose--you anchor it under the rail and attach your purse to its hook--but I've never seen a poker chip put to use this way.

I tweeted this photo when it happened, and one follower suggested that this is actually fairly common, but I don't think I've ever seen it before.

One form of sexism in poker

I see that the final nine of the WSOP Main Event have been determined since I went to bed. Every news story I have seen so far--and, I predict, every one I will see in the future--prominently mentions that two women were eliminated just short of the final table, in 11th and 10th places.

More troubling is that as Day 7 played out, my Twitter feed was full of people openly expressing their hopes that one or both remaining women would make the final table. Poker being a zero-sum game, if you hope that a female makes the final table and/or wins, it is the same as hoping that a male does not do so.

None of the people I follow on Twitter who hoped for the women to advance did so on the basis of knowing them personally, or because of them having superior poker skill and thus deserving the victory. It was entirely because of their sex, and for no other reason.

If you want for a good outcome to happen to one person and a bad outcome to happen to another person for no reason other than their respective genders, well, we have a couple of words in our language for what that makes you: (1) sexist, and (2) bigot.

I think I expressed this as well as I'm capable of doing four years ago when Tiffany Michelle was garnering attention for being the "last woman standing":

Yes, women are statistically under-represented at poker tables generally and in big poker tournaments specifically. But that is true of black people, too, so that fact does not constitute a rational justification for paying attention to one group but not the other.

If you privately are glad to see that a black person will not win the Main Event this year, then you are obviously a racist. Of course, if you are upset about the fact that a black person will not win the Main Event this year, then that makes you a racist, too. Similarly, if you hope that Michelle is eliminated because for whatever reason you can't stand the idea of a woman winning, you are sexist. And, in parallel, if you were rooting for her to win solely because of her gender, that, too, makes you sexist. It's all the same. If you favor or disfavor a person because of race, you're a racist. If you favor or disfavor a person because of sex, you're a sexist. You're a bigot either way.

One of the great things about poker is that it simply doesn't matter whether you're male or female, black, white, Hispanic, or Asian, young or old, tall or short, skinny or fat, physically handicapped or a perfect specimen of humanity. Not only is the game equally open to all, but none of those characteristics intrinsically impact one's ability to learn and succeed at the game.

Frankly, I find the attention heaped on female players in the spotlight demeaning to women. Every time there is attention lavished on a female player specifically because she is female, there is at least a vague undertone that she merits the attention because she's doing something one would tend to think she shouldn't be able to do, like a pig learning to play a Brahms piano concerto.

What would be most genuinely respectful of women, in my never-humble opinion, is silently accepting, as a simple matter of fact--so obvious that it's not even worth mentioning, let alone dwelling on--that women are just as capable of playing the game as men are.

To the media outlets and bloggers who focus on the Last Woman Standing, but completely disregard the Last Black Standing, I ask you to justify why you deem one worthy of your attention but not the other. Can you do it?

I think it should be noted that nobody either in or out of the poker media took me up on the challenge to explain why the sex of a poker player was newsworthy but race was not. I'm still listening, should anybody care to try.

Poker, "this party of apes"

I recently watched Elia Kazan's 1951 film, "A Streetcar Named Desire" (based on the Tennessee WIlliams play) for the first time in, well, a couple of decades anyway. I decided to do so after reading my friend Shamus's insightful essay for Epic Poker about the film's poker scenes. (See here.)

I had completely forgotten that poker even made an appearance in the movie. But as Martin points out, the game forms a crucial part of some of the film's themes, especially the separate roles and realms of men and women, and the dangers that lurk when the barriers between them are breached.

A couple of days ago I posted as a "Poker Gem" Karl Malden's line as Mitch: "Poker should not be played in a house with women." I put that up before the scene had even finished playing, pausing the DVD long enough to post it. I meant it mostly as a joke, a wry reminder of how things used to be. But as the movie continues, we learn that it is, in fact, a stern foreshadowing.

Poker, it is suggested, is a males-only activity, first, because of the vices that come associated with it: drinking, smoking cigars, swearing, lewd storytelling, fighting--vulgarity of every variety. But a second and perhaps more important reason is that the game brings out the raw, brute passions of earthy men, and when they are so aroused, they are not easily controlled or contained. Women who happen to be in the environs are in danger. For these reasons, the ladies are, as Stella wryly phrases it, "cordially not invited."

In case we are too dense to make the associations between poker and men's baser passions by observation alone, the screenplay won't let us miss them. Blanche DuBois confides her opinion of Stanley to her sister (Stanley's wife), Stella:

If you'll forgive me, he's common... He's like an animal. He has an animal's habits. There's even something subhuman about him. Thousands of years have passed him right by, and there he is. Stanley Kowalski, survivor of the Stone Age, bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle. And you - you here waiting for him. Maybe he'll strike you or maybe grunt and kiss you, that's if kisses have been discovered yet. His poker night you call it. This party of apes.

Gentle Mitch is no ape. He leaves the game to chat with Blanche, who he immediately finds charming. He actually appears more comfortable in the side room with the women than in the main room with the men. This very fact (even ignoring his schoolboy mannerisms) suggests that he is, in some sense, not fully a man--an idea further suggested later by the revelation that he still lives with his mother and is to be presumed to be a virgin. (Apparently in the stage play on which the film is based, Blanche's husband committed suicide after being exposed as having had a homosexual affair, so the fact that Mitch is deemed appropriate to fill those shoes is perhaps further innuendo.)

A drunk, angry Stanley bolts from the poker game to invade the women's space in a manner entirely different from Mitch's: angrily, violently, wreaking havoc. He hurls a radio through a window and beats his wife. Near the end of the film, he will again penetrate this same space when Blanche is there alone, again doing so in a way that the mild-mannered Mitch never would: set on violation. What happens between Stanley and Blanche could not be portrayed or perhaps even spoken explicitly, due to censorship standards of the day, but we are not left in much doubt.

That unfinished scene is followed immediately by a second poker game, which functions as the setting for the film's denouement: Blanche has been tipped all the way into frank madness. She is briefly restrained, but then allowed to walk--with assistance from a man--into the forbidden territory, past the poker table and into the car waiting to take her to an asylum. Stella, conversely, takes her newborn baby and flees to an upstairs neighbor, vowing never to return. Her apartment has been irredeemably marked--contaminated, even--as a place in which the ugliest male instincts are allowed to play out. This sadly permanent "no women allowed" status is symbolized by the poker game, which, we presume, continues after its brief interruption.

I've seen poker serve a lot of different functions in movies, but I don't recall anything like this. In "Streetcar" it is simultaneously an emblem of, arena for, and a inflamer of men's coarse, animalistic tendencies. The game has never felt that way to me, but the fact that Williams and Kazan can make it serve such roles so effortlessly in this movie has left me feeling disturbed, unsettled, contemplative. If I come to any brilliant conclusions along those lines, I'll let you know.

The image above is Thomas Hart Benton's painting Poker Night (From "A Streetcar Named Desire"), 1948. It hangs in the Whitney Museum in New York City. You can hear the museum's audio guide about it here.


ADDENDUM, March 1, 2013

Martin's excellent essay disappeared from the web for quite a while following the collapse of the Epic Poker League, along with its web site. But today he reposted it on his own blog, here.

Poker gems, #435

Harold Mitchell (played by Karl Malden) in "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951).

Poker should not be played in a house with women.

More stats on women at the WSOP

A few days ago I presented a rudimentary statistical analysis showing, I believe, that women in the WSOP Main Event performed less well on average than the men did, in terms of surviving to the money. I wanted to do another test of how the women cashing did compared to the men cashing, in terms of final standings, but I couldn't do it until now. With the last female in the field eliminated a few hours ago, I can now proceed.

First, though, I have to admit a small problem. I was told that 13 women cashed. This apparently came from Nolan Dalla doing a hand count of the field when the bubble was reached. I have been able to find no list of the names of these women. From news reports of those who went deepest, plus a little detective work, I have been able to identify 12 women in the list of the payouts. But if there were 13, I sure can't figure out who the 13th one is. I've checked a whole bunch of gender-ambiguous names on the list, using several sources (such as Google image search), and can't find whoever the last one is--if Dalla is right about the number.

The 12 I confidently identified (name, finishing spot):

Moutinho, 29

Musumeci, 62

Crawford, 85

Callaway, 203

Koerner, 299

Luu, 310

Naugoks, 391

Renaud, 398

Rousso, 511

Andrews, 521

Kerstetter, 590

Gazes, 609

Fortunately, I can do the math with just 12, though in order to do so, I'm going to have to pretend that there were only 12 women cashing, along with 680 men, for a total of 692--even though there were really 693 in the money. Because I don't know where the missing data point is, it won't systematically skew the results; it will just make them a little less robust. (However, because the number of women became smaller as the event wore on, and those remaining got more media attention, I'm positive that the missing woman--if there indeed is one--did not finish above the 142nd spot, when it was widely reported that only three women were left, and she is much more likely to be among the earlier exits than the later ones.)

I'm going to run what's called the Mann-Whitney U-test, which you can read a little about here. Basically, you put all your data points in order, then perform a statistical test on their rankings to determine if those with characteristic A are, on average, more toward the high end of the list, more toward the low end of the list, or similar in distribution when compared to those with characteristic B.

You enter lists of the rankings into an online calculator such as this one, and it spits some numbers back at you. In this case, I did it two ways. The first time I entered the raw place-finishing numbers in as two datasets and let the software do everything else. The second time I calculated the value of C myself (it's the sum of the number of men each of the 12 women bested, in this case 4230), then directly entered the values for n1, n2, and U. Both methods gave the same results, giving me confidence that I did it all correctly.

The bottom line is this: The p-value of the resulting statistical test is 0.83, which means, roughly, that if we ran the tournament a whole bunch of times from where things stood when the money bubble burst, we would see at least this level of difference between the sexes' average subsequent performance by chance alone 83% of the time.

In other words, the women's performance, once in the money, was not statistically distinguishable from that of the men. Put yet another way, the distribution of the women's final standings is very much what one would expect if one just randomly picked 12 out of the last 692 finishers. Their results do not tend to cluster meaningfully toward either the high or the low end of the list.

So once this group of women hit the money, their results were completely comparable to the men. Of course, this is a very small sample, so the test does not have a lot of resolving power. But to tell you the truth, I was expecting, based on the previous results, that the women in the money would be sufficiently clustered low in the standings that their mean performance would be demonstrably lower than the men's collective average. It was not so.

You can get a sense of this graphically, too. Below is a plot of the women as pink dots against the blue line of the men in the money. (I swear I did not pick those colors; they are what the Excel chart wizard chose by default!) It is, strangely, oriented with the best lower on the left, though that doesn't really matter. (It's late and I'm too tired to figure out how to make this just a horizontal line the way I originally envisioned it.) Click on it for the bigger version.

Even without running any numbers, you can basically eyeball it and see that the women are not noticeably clustered toward the top or bottom of the line.

The only odd thing is how they tend to show up in pairs, one going out soon after another of her kind. It's probably rooted in the same biological phenomenon that causes women always go to the restroom together, but that's one of those mysteries to which we men are doomed to stay eternally ignorant.

Conclusion: As far as can be determined with the very small sample, once female players reached the money, they performed, on average, as well as the men did in terms of finishes--in striking contrast to the most likely conclusion about women's performance from the start of the tourney to the money bubble.

Women underperforming in WSOP main event?

While I was out playing poker this evening, B.J. Nemeth mentioned on Twitter that only 13 out of 242 women cashed in this year's Main Event--fewer than would be predicted based on their numbers. That represented only 5.4% of the female entrants, whereas 10.1% (693/6865) of the whole field and 10.3% (680/6623) of the men made the money.

His characterization of women "underperforming" in terms of results (he was not, he clarified, trying to imply anything about skill) touched off some discussion about whether the numbers were statistically significant, given the small sample size.

It wasn't something I wanted to try testing while in the midst of shaking down tourists at Bally's. But now that I'm home, I can give it a shot.

Using the simplest statistical test available for a dichotomous variable--the binomial probability--we can easily determine whether a given rate of cashing is within the expected range of random statistical variance, if we take the entire field's rate of cashing as the expected baseline. Put another way, our null hypothesis is that the women's lower rate of cashing compared to the men's is due only to randomness. Does the math cause us to accept or reject that hypothesis?

Reject.

The expected number of women cashing would be 24. The probability of getting a result at least as skewed as was actually seen this year (i.e., 13 or fewer women cashing out of 242 who entered) is only 0.0063. In other words, if we knew that the women played exactly as well as the men so that any difference in the two groups' rates of cashing was due to chance alone, and we played this same tournament a thousand times, we would expect to see a result deviating this far from the predicted only 6 times. The other 994 times we would expect to see more women than that make the money. That is a pretty striking result.

If you want to see the numbers calculated for yourself, follow the link above to the probability calculator and enter n=242, k=13, p=0.101.*

The conclusion is that it is overwhelmingly likely that there is some force at work other than randomness to explain women's lower rate of cashing. The most obvious explanation sure seems to me to also be the most likely: On average, the women played less well than the men, to a measurable degree, if we take survival to the money as a surrogate measure of quality of play.

Of course one can play perfectly and still get knocked out early, or play terribly and win the whole thing. But we lack any ability to measure poker skill or quality of play directly, and we're stuck measuring what can be measured. We have to hope and assume that there is sufficient correlation between quality of play and survival success that the latter can shed at least some meaningful light on the former.

Please note that saying that "the women played less well than the men" is not the same thing as saying that "women are worse poker players than men." It is an observation limited to this particular group of players in this tournament. Still, I find it difficult to conjure up a plausible explanation for the large difference in cash rates other than a significant difference between the two sexes in average quality of play.

B.J. did not claim to know the outcome of any statistical test, and even seemed to deny caring much what the statistics might say; his position was that the difference in cashing rates was sufficient large to be interesting and noteworthy regardless of how a statistician would analyze it. I'm adding to that subjective opinion the objective conclusion that the difference in cashing rates is large enough to be highly unlikely to be the result of random variance alone. Make of that what you will, but I'm forced to agree with B.J. that it is, at the very least, interesting and noteworthy.

*I suppose it would be technically better to use the men's rate of cashing as the baseline, rather than the entire field, but I was trying to be generous. If we use the men's rate instead, we enter p=0.103 instead of 0.101. That yields a slightly lower probability that the difference is due to chance alone: about 5/1000 instead of 6/1000.

Way to stay classy, Bluff

So Bluff magazine's managing editor earlier today put up an online piece in which, without further comment or explanation, she casually refers to women as "broads." See here.

Next time, why not just go with "bitches"?

Just in case the page gets removed or altered later, a screen shot is below.

Whatever happened to...

...the future ban of male players entering the women's event at last year's World Series of Poker?

On June 11, 2010, WSOP Communications Director Seth Palansky was quoted by Card Player as saying, "We will have our repercussions against any man that entered the ladies tournament. There are consequences for actions, and they’ll pay the price." Also, "The good news is at the World Series of Poker, we have the right to refuse service to anyone at any time at any point that we deem, as operators of the event."

Note that the threat was phrased not as a possibility, but as a guarantee. It was not, "We may have our repercussions," but "We will have our repercussions," and not "they may pay the price," but "they'll pay the price."

This cannot reasonably be read as just an implication that those involved would suffer natural consequences of social disgrace or loss of reputation from the poker community. That would not fit the obvious implications of "We will have our repercussions," or of that bit about the right to refuse service.

So what, if anything, has the WSOP done to those male players? I sure haven't heard of anything. At the time it happened, I predicted that this would turn out to be a pure bluff:

Assuming, as would seem to be the case, that it is illegally discriminatory for a place of public accommodation to forbid men from entering the tournament, it must surely also be illegally discriminatory to refuse them equal access to public events in the future on the basis of their legitimate participation today.

Suppose that some racist restaurant owner didn't want to serve blacks, but wanted to get around the anti-discrimination laws. So he says, "I'll serve you today if you absolutely insist, but if you do, then I'm going to ban you from the premises forever, because I'm free to take or reject the business of anybody I want to."

How does that even make sense? If Harrah's doesn't have the legal right to refuse access to a public event on the basis of sex, then it can't possibly have the right to ban that person from future events on the grounds that he accepted the open invitation. I can't imagine how a court, if asked to decide the matter, could come to any conclusion other than the obvious: The future ban is just a different means of practicing the illegal discrimination. There can't be any logical distinction between "You can't play today because you're male," and "OK, you can play today, but if you do, then because you're male, we will never let you enter one of our tournaments again." The perverse consequence of that approach would be that a place of public accommodation could freely discriminate on the basis of sex or race for a person's entire lifetime, as long as they didn't do it this one time.

That's just too bizarre to take seriously. If they really try it, I'd love to be the attorney bringing the suit. Seems like a slam-dunk win for the plaintiffs to me.

I stand by that.

So, Mr. Palansky--what have you actually done in terms of making good on your threat from last year? If nothing, as I suspect, they why did you lie about the situation? And do you have any more empty threats you'd like to issue while you're at it?

Year of the....what?

In March of this year, Vanessa Selbst won the NAPT event at Mohegan Sun and Annie Duke won the NBC Heads Up Poker Championship. In April, Liv Boeree won the EPT San Remo event. On the basis of those three wins, the meme quickly spread in the poker media that 2010 would be "The Year of the Woman."

Here's a partial list of people/entities/blogs/outlets that affirmatively shared in this assertion (i.e., I'm excluding those that simply noted that others were using the phrase, or discussed it with evident skepticism):

Taylor Kent (for the Cake Poker blog)
Bernard Lee (for ESPN)
Ty Stewart (WSOP VP)
Kevin Mathers (Pokerati)
Jennifer Newell (WomanPokerPlayer.com)
Wicked Chops Poker
Ruff Poker (unsigned article)
Trishelle Cannatella (Absolute Poker blog)
Dr. Pauly (Tao of Poker blog)

Please note that (1) this is a woefully partial and completely arbitrary list, made mostly of the ones that popped up most obviously in a Google search, or links from those, and (2) I'm not implying any criticism for use of the phrase.

But now let's note what else has happened this year: David Williams won the WPT Championship in April. LeRon Washington won the WPT Invitational in February. Phil Ivey won his eighth bracelet at the WSOP in June. And last night, Dwyte Pilgrim won the WPT Borgata Open. What do these four men have in common? They're all black.

So if three women winning major poker tournaments in one year makes it "The Year of the Woman," surely four blacks winning major poker tournaments in one year makes it "The Year of the Black." Right?

Of course, when Ivey won his bracelet, that already made three for the year--the same as the number of women winners, and that didn't result in any chorus of "The Year of the Black." So I'm guessing that adding a fourth to the roster won't, either.

But why not? Being black has every bit as much to do with being a good poker player--or being unable to be a good poker player--as being a woman does: They're equally irrelevant factors.

So why do people like Duke and Jennifer Harman and Kathy Liebert have to wrestle with the qualified compliment of being said to be among the best female poker players, while nobody speaks of Ivey as being among the best black poker players?

Why do so many pay close attention and write news stories and give interviews to the "last woman standing" in the WSOP Main Event, while nobody (except me) calls attention to the "last black standing"?

Why do so many poker tournament series have a women-only event, but none have a blacks-only event?

And, again, why will so many readily blog/publish about "The Year of the Woman," while, if my prediction is correct, none of the same individuals or corporate entities will make a peep about "The Year of the Black," even though there is objectively a stronger case to be made for the latter than for the former?

There's only one reason I can think of, and it ties all of these things together: Because if you modify the phrase "among the best poker players" with the additional term "black," if you watch to see who is the "last black standing," if you sponsor a blacks-only tournament, or if you call attention to the "Year of the Black," you imply that there's something special, something remarkable about a black person playing poker well. And that, in turn, would imply that blacks are somehow inherently inferior at poker. It comes close to echoing that famous phrase about a performing poodle walking on its hind legs--what's remarkable is not that whether he can do it well, but that he can do it at all.

Everybody instinctively senses that that would be the implication of making any noise at all about race when a member of a minority wins a poker tournament. Furthermore, they know that saying or suggesting that blacks are intrinsically inferior at poker is neither politically nor factually correct. So nothing is said of it.

But obviously, many people have no similar qualms about the same implication as it pertains to women. That is, they see nothing amiss about commenting on how remarkable it is that a woman wins a poker tournament. In order to do that, I think, you have to buy into the premise--consciously or unconsciously--that women can't really be expected to win poker tournaments because they are inherently inferior at the game, and therefore it is newsworthy when it happens.

Here's my challenge to those listed above, as well as everybody else who echoed, adopted, and otherwise approved of "The Year of the Woman" thing: Put up a post or story or essay of equal prominence declaring this to be "The Year of the Black"--or, alternatively, explain why you won't, why you think the former is perfectly OK but the latter unacceptable.

I'll be watching.

What not to say to women at the poker table

Amusing video by Kristy Arnett and Thuy Doan:

http://tinyurl.com/2ceoznh

Separate but equal

Just in case you're not sufficiently worked up about separate women's events in live poker tournament series, now you can experience the same segregation at your favorite online poker site, PokerStars (see http://pokerworks.com/poker-news/2010/08/03/exclusive-ladies-poker-events-pokerstars.html), or at your slightly less favorite site, Carbon Poker (see http://pokerworks.com/poker-news/2010/06/29/carbon-poker-ladies-tournaments.html).

The love never stops.

Women's event at the WSOP

This post is about the ladies' event of the WSOP, which started today, as well as the general phenomenon of such tournaments. The post is going to be quite different that it would have been if I had written it when I first decided to do so, about nine hours ago. Since then, I have been back to the Pavilion Room to play a cash game, took a few pictures, and saw and heard various relevant things, as that is where Day 1 of Event #22 is being played.

I have also, since returning home,

-- Read maybe 100 Twitter messages about the subject, mostly from people I know, a few from people I don't know.

-- Read this story at Card Player's site about the WSOP threatening various long-term consequences for the men who played in the event.

-- Watched Daniel Negreanu's video blog post about the subject.

-- Read the PokerNews live updates for the first eight hours or so of play.

-- Read F-Train's excellent post. This may have changed the intended post more than anything else, because he said much of what I was thinking, but better than I might have, as well as shifting my thinking on one big point, which I'll get to later.

As often happens, I don't have a coherent thesis (failing English Comp 101), just a bunch of more-or-less interconnected thoughts, which I present here in no particular order. I am going to assume that my readers are familiar with the beat-to-death basic arguments for and against the existence of female-only events, and not rehash them here.


1. Here are two men I saw playing who were close enough to photograph easily, presented so that you can either hate or admire them, as you choose. I have no idea who they are.






2. Taking an early departure from topical relevance, I just have to show you this picture of Cheryl Hines. From a technical point of view, it's a horrible shot, but I love her facial expression anyway.




3. One of the women in my cash game had earlier been playing in the tournament, and was at a table where a male player (she designated all of them who entered as "idiots," just to give you one sampling of woman-on-the-street opinion) had a tampon that he was using as a card protector. I thought this might be my little reporting scoop of the day, but I found out when I got home that the incident--including the penalty this jackass incurred--had already been widely reported. Not cool, dude. Not funny.


4. As has also been reported everywhere, upon every elimination of a male player, the female players let out a collective cheer. This was not--repeat, not--the polite "good game" applause that one hears from the audience when a player exits a final table. No, this had an unmistakable flavor of "Get the hell out of here and don't ever come back."

This behavior shows that men have no monopoly on being jackasses and poor sports. Perhaps it is wrong and offensive for these men to have entered the event, but that doesn't make it OK to vocalize your glee at their elimination. As my mother liked to remind me ad nauseum, two wrongs don't make a right.

If you object to a male entering the tournament and sitting at your table, I think you are within your rights to basically snub him socially--don't humor him, don't chat with him, don't interact more than is minimally required to keep the game moving. Cold shoulders from eight women at a table might make him rethink whether this is an action he wants to repeat. I consider that a socially acceptable form of expressing your opinion about his choice.

If you feel like being more direct, you can even start the day by telling him something like this: "I think your entering this tournament is like urinating in the punch bowl of a party that you weren't invited to. I resent you being here, and I hope you will think better of entering any other such event in the future." Then snub him. Nothing wrong with that, as long as you're calm and civil in your tone and choice of words.

But if you want to claim the moral high ground in this controversy, you have to keep your reaction to the situation classy. Cheering an opponent's loss completely fails that simple test.


5. I wonder if Harrah's is really serious about imposing some sort of sanctions on the men who entered. Are they actually that stupid, or is it just a corporate bluff?

Here's what Seth Palansky said, according to Card Player's reporter: "The good news is at the World Series of Poker, we have the right to refuse service to anyone at any time at any point that we deem, as operators of the event."

Assuming, as would seem to be the case, that it is illegally discriminatory for a place of public accommodation to forbid men from entering the tournament, it must surely also be illegally discriminatory to refuse them equal access to public events in the future on the basis of their legitimate participation today.

Suppose that some racist restaurant owner didn't want to serve blacks, but wanted to get around the anti-discrimination laws. So he says, "I'll serve you today if you absolutely insist, but if you do, then I'm going to ban you from the premises forever, because I'm free to take or reject the business of anybody I want to."

How does that even make sense? If Harrah's doesn't have the legal right to refuse access to a public event on the basis of sex, then it can't possibly have the right to ban that person from future events on the grounds that he accepted the open invitation. I can't imagine how a court, if asked to decide the matter, could come to any conclusion other than the obvious: The future ban is just a different means of practicing the illegal discrimination. There can't be any logical distinction between "You can't play today because you're male," and "OK, you can play today, but if you do, then because you're male, we will never let you enter one of our tournaments again." The perverse consequence of that approach would be that a place of public accommodation could freely discriminate on the basis of sex or race for a person's entire lifetime, as long as they didn't do it this one time.

That's just too bizarre to take seriously. If they really try it, I'd love to be the attorney bringing the suit. Seems like a slam-dunk win for the plaintiffs to me.


6. Speaking of bizarre legal theories, you should listen to Negreanu's. He proposes that Harrah's set up a men-only tournament with a buy in of $100 billion. Then they could legally hold the women's tournament as is.

Well, unlike Seth Palansky's idiotic claim, at least Negreanu freely admits that he doesn't know the law and doesn't know what he's talking about. Courts enforcing anti-discrimination laws have little patience for schemes that pay lip service to inviting full participation by everyone, but in actual practice have unreasonable or insurmountable barriers to participation by members of some protected class.

I guess Negreanu never heard of "separate but equal" being struck down--and he's not even trying to make it "equal."


7. I have what will probably seem like a hopelessly muddled and self-contradictory view of discrimination law, by the way. I believe that:

A) There should be no laws prohibiting discrimination by private entities, such as individuals or corporations, even if they are in the business of public accommodation. That is, yes, a bar or hotel or store should be able to exclude anybody on any basis--even the most vile, such as race. They almost always shouldn't do it, but they should have the legal right to make that choice. That is not because I endorse racial (or other) discrimination, but because, primarily, I place an enormous value on private property rights. (Biting tongue so as not to go into full rant on this. Suffice it to say that Rand Paul had it right recently, and I was disappointed that he backpedaled on the point (though he didn't actually retract it).)

B) However, if there are going to be anti-discrimination laws on the books, then they should be vigorously enforced. This is especially true when it comes to enforcing them in ways that are unpopular, and not what those enacting the laws had in mind. Using such laws to challenge women getting free or discounted drinks at a bar, or free or discounted entry into hotel swimming pools (both of which are very common in Vegas) is precisely the sort of thing I have in mind. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, as they say. (And letting men gander is the main motivation, isn't it?!) One of the most effective ways of getting bad laws changed or repealed is to have them fully enforced.


8. Oh, PokerNews, is this really your best work? From the very first live update of the event today:

"Over the next three days, our bloggers and field reporters will be relieved of the stench that comes with every male-dominated tournament field, as the women of poker take to the felt for the 2010 WSOP Ladies No-Limit Hold’em Championship."

That's how you start--by talking about how women smell better than men? That's as much of an embarrassing face-palm moment as Harrah's giving out decks of lavendar playing cards as gifts (as they did last year).


9. The next paragraph is just as bad, though for completely different reasons:

"Last year's event drew 1,060 of the world's finest female poker players...."

Uh, no, it didn't. It may have drawn 1060 female players, and it may have drawn many of the world's finest ones. But the sentence includes every participant in the tournament within the category of "the world's finest female poker players." I watched some of them play. Trust me--that term does not accurately characterize some of the ones I saw. (See my post here.)


10. Several people reported via Twitter that Harrah's security guards were harrassing and intimidating men who signed up--requring them to submit to being searched, for example--in ways that women were not subjected to. This is, of course, appalling. Frankly, I hope those who were at the receiving end of such treatment sue Harrah's, prove that this was done purely on the basis of gender, and win a big, fat judgment.

If Harrah's is going to claim that it has the right to do this as a condition of entering the tournament, but applies the requirement selectively only to men, then legally it's going to have to say that it would also have the right to apply that requirement only to blacks or Asians, for example, if it wanted to do so.

Imagine how many people in the WSOP and security departments would lose their jobs if it became publicly known that they harrassed racial minorities that way in an effort to dissuade them from entering a poker tournament. Then imagine how much Harrah's stock value would fall when mutual funds, retirement funds, etc., came under pressure to sell it off, with Harrah's acquiring a foul reputation for its own private version of apartheid.

Really--how stupid are the people in charge of this corporation?


11. Soon after I sat down in the cash game (maybe 2:30 p.m. or so), I heard an announcement over the PA system. There is apparently a daily rundown of news given to the players. Today, a female announcer (no idea who it was) informed the players about who had won bracelets in the last 24 hours, what events were going on today, etc.

Among the announcements, though, was that Shaun Deeb was playing in the Ladies' Tournament, in drag. (See his story and photo here.) She wanted to make clear that he was doing this because he had lost a prop bet, and he had pledged that any money he won would be donated to some unspecified female-oriented charity. She added, "So please don't give him any grief about being here."

Let's make clear what is implied here. First, by omission, she suggests on behalf of Harrah's (because this woman was clearly speaking for Harrah's) that it is OK to give all of the other men grief about their participation. Again, just consider the obvious racial parallel to realize how shockingly wrong and self-defeating this is.

Second, she announces that Harrah's corporately thinks it's OK for some men to be playing in the women-only event, if their reason is good enough. And, by implication, Harrah's reserves the right to determine what constitutes a good enough reason.

Putting this tidbit together with the previous one, we get this picture: If you are a male and register for this tournament, Harrah's representatives will apparently quiz you as to your motivations (after taking your money). If you pass their little test (for which there are obviously no published or set standards), they will let you go unharrassed, and even publicly praise your participation. If they don't like your reasons, on the other hand, you will be searched, threatened with future exclusion, and watched for any rules violations with a scrutiny that is not given to female players, so that they have a pretext for disqualifying you from the event, while keeping your money.

Hey, Harrah's--how about throwing in a little backroom flogging while you're at it. After all, it's private property, and you can do whatever you want, right?


12. I understand from a PokerNews video that the bracelet for this event is different from all the others of 2010: it has little pink diamonds on it. Join me in collective eye-rolling here.

13. The same video reports (and I heard this in person at the Rio, too) that two tables decided to do restroom breaks en masse so that nobody would miss a hand.

The stupidity just never ends. That decision meant that everybody involved spent several times as long away from the table as they would have otherwise--while the clock was running. Particularly in a shallow-stack event like this, time is a precious commodity. You can't afford to be dilly-dallying around while players at the other tables are accumulating chips by the minute.

This event apparently gathered two groups of nine people in which nobody was bright enough to figure out that they hurt rather than helped themselves with this move. *sigh*


13. My original reason for thinking to write a post on this subject was a Twitter friend asking why on earth any men would enter, even if it's technically allowed. That was the approach I was first planning on taking: a list of possible reasons one might have. The more obvious ones include easier route to a bracelet and money (Kathy Liebert is one who doesn't mind admitting that fact; she tweeted, "I do like the ladies event. It is an easier field than the open events because many of the women haven't played much"), meet women, get publicity, lost a prop bet, etc.

I was then going to expound on one possible reason that I suspect is the primary motivation for only a small minority: Trying to effect change. Imagine, I had thought of saying, if they got 1000 women entering but 3000 men. What would that force Harrah's to do? If you're a principled opponent of single-sex events, isn't that a legitimate goal?

I'm not taking that tack now because F-Train's post persuaded me that it's wrong. I like his general proposal for other ways that one could and should go about trying to get things changed, if one is pure of motive.


14. I have somehow gotten this many words out without addressing the usual arguments about consistency: If you're against the women's event, are you also opposed to the seniors' event? Well, yes, though less so, for one reason: It's one from which prospective players are barred only temporarily, not for life. Everybody will be eligible for it sooner or later. Heck, even I will be eligible for it next year. (Ugh.) That makes it less onerous, in my view.

What about the employees' event? That's a kind of odd one. If it were solely for Harrah's employees--who, I understand, are ineligible to participate in open fields--it would make sense as some compensation. But they open it to all casino employees. I don't really see the point of it. It's not like being a casino employee puts one at an intrinsic disadvantage for playing poker. If I were in charge, I think I'd eliminate it.

Although rarely mentioned in discussions of women's events, there is another type of tournament that one has to take into account if one is going to try to achieve logical consistency. (I strive to, but often fail, and I'll admit in advance that this whole subject is one on which I probably haven't made it.) There are special events for people with certain physical disabilities, most notably the National Deaf Poker Tour. Hey, Mr. Smarty-Pants, isn't that discrimination, too?

Yeah, it is, as are the seniors' and employees' events. But they have something in common that still distinguishes them in one important respect from the women's events: They were not started and are not continued because of a belief that those invited are, on average, not up to snuff to play in open fields. I said I won't go into the hackneyed arguments about ladies' events, and I won't, but you just can't get around the historical stigma problem. Even if current organizers disavow any such belief, everybody knows that that's how and why the practice began, and it taints the victory.

To the best of my knowledge, nobody has ever thought that, for example, deaf people have less poker talent or ability, on average, than those without that handicap. But they do have particular pragmatic difficulties that others don't have to deal with. I can understand why they would want to have an occasional tournament where, first, they are on equal footing with their opponents in terms of the nuts and bolts of the game, and, second, they can easily engage in the social aspects of poker that are much harder when they have to resort to lip reading, an interpreter, or the chance presence of a player who knows sign language.

(I was at the Orleans once while a deaf poker tournament was going on. It was fascinating to watch, though I felt a little self-conscious about it, and tried to be discreet. I was genuinely interested in how they made all the pokery things work that we usually rely on our ears for, but at the same time I didn't want to make them feel like they were a freak show there for my entertainment.)

That said, if the WSOP proposed to begin a bracelet event for which only the deaf were eligible, I'd have serious misgivings about it. This obviously applies with equal force to any other specific type of physical handicap for which one might envision a special poker tournament--but if there currently exist any others, I don't know of them.


15. Hey, speaking of male interlopers in the women's event, how about this guy skulking around?




Oh, never mind--that's just B.J. Nemeth, one of the best photographers at the Rio year after year.


Whew. I'm all typed out. This has got to be one of the longest posts I've ever done, and it has worn me out even though I have barely touched on some of the arguments that one might expect me to have tackled. I guess I'll just have to leave those for somebody else, or at least for another day.


Addendum, June 12, 2010

Nicole Gordon (aka Change100) has a particularly thoughtful and well-written op-ed on the whole subject, at PokerNews, here. Other new bloggentary available at Table Tango, Tao of Poker, and CrAAKKer.


Addendum, June 13, 2010

Yet more interesting perspectives here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Poker gems, #366

Annette Obrestad, in an interview with ESPN magazine, as quoted on PokerNews, here.


I've always said that girls suck at poker. I say that because they do.

Most deserving, for sure

I see over on Wicked Chops Poker that porn star Samantha Ryan has landed a sponsorship deal with UltimateBlecch. Obviously, she must be a far better poker player than, say, Kathy Liebert or Vanessa Selbst, and that's why UB picked her over them.

Actually, the deal makes perfect sense. Who better than a porn star to represent a site that screws its customers?

He said/she said

Interesting discussion about the special challenges women face in getting professional sponsorship from poker sites as the first of what I understand will be an occasional ongoing "he said/she said" series at http://www.womanpokerplayer.com/. See here and here.

One of the points made by both discussants was emphasized--in what I must assume was an unintended manner--by one of the ads that popped up for me next to the "his" essay (they probably rotate so you may not see the same one):




All else being equal, which version of this woman (assuming it's actually the same person, which I kind of doubt) is more likely to land a sponsorship deal?

By the way, to the writers of the series (both of whom I am pleased to call friends), I just have to say: The whole idea would be pepped up if you were to sling a little mud at each other--you know, like the "Jane, you ignorant slut" remarks in the old Saturday Night Live parodies of "60 Minutes" debates. (Yes, I'm just kidding.)

Women at the table

If you are, like me, perpetually fascinated by the differences--real and perceived--between how men and women behave at the poker table and get treated at the poker table, you may be interested in the juxtaposition of these two posts, which were consecutive in my RSS reader this morning:

This time I made someone else at the poker table cry (and don't miss the links to other "crying at the table" stories at the end of the post)

Boys will be boys

I think it's in my best interest to post these links without further comment. What I agree with, what I disagree with, and what I might want to smack somebody for saying or writing, well, you'll just have to guess at that. I'm keeping it to myself.


(Thanks to Wolynski for the photo, taken during the 2009 WSOP ladies event, sent to me at the time, and used here without permission but hopefully without objection. And see her VegasImages blog, too.)

Last Black Standing

OK, you might as well fire up the ol' word processors and get ready to start writing the hate mail over this one.

The man pictured above, Michael Carroll, was just eliminated from the Main Event of the 2008 World Series of Poker in 27th place, the first knockout of Day 7, on which the final three tables will be reduced to the Final Table.

He was the Last Black Standing.

Why does that matter? It doesn't. But neither does it matter that Tiffany Michelle is the Last Woman Standing, yet that fact has received oodles of attention from the media. (Her name is apparently really Tiffany Michelle Graham. I assume that "Tiffany Michelle" is sort of a stage name she adopted. Since that's the name under which she entered the tournament, I'll use it here.) On the PokerNews live feeds over the past couple of days, several times a day they would throw in a post about how many female players were left, as if this fact were somehow meaningful. They never once did a post about how many black people were left in it.

Being black is exactly as relevant to one's poker playing as is being female. So why does one immutable characteristic get lavish attention and the other none at all? I don't pretend to know the answer to that. I only know that it's both silly and wrong that so many people care so deeply about whether poker players have two X chromosomes or only one. It is my own form of mini-retaliation (and spoofing) to point out that Mr. Carroll--about whom I know nothing, by the way--is just as deserving of media attention for having more melanin than any of the remaining players as Ms. Michelle is for having ovaries instead of testicles.

Yes, women are statistically under-represented at poker tables generally and in big poker tournaments specifically. But that is true of black people, too, so that fact does not constitute a rational justification for paying attention to one group but not the other.

If you privately are glad to see that a black person will not win the Main Event this year, then you are obviously a racist. Of course, if you are upset about the fact that a black person will not win the Main Event this year, then that makes you a racist, too. Similarly, if you hope that Michelle is eliminated because for whatever reason you can't stand the idea of a woman winning, you are sexist. And, in parallel, if you were rooting for her to win solely because of her gender, that, too, makes you sexist. It's all the same. If you favor or disfavor a person because of race, you're a racist. If you favor or disfavor a person because of sex, you're a sexist. You're a bigot either way.

One of the great things about poker is that it simply doesn't matter whether you're male or female, black, white, Hispanic, or Asian, young or old, tall or short, skinny or fat, physically handicapped or a perfect specimen of humanity. Not only is the game equally open to all, but none of those characteristics intrinsically impact one's ability to learn and succeed at the game.

Frankly, I find the attention heaped on female players in the spotlight demeaning to women. Every time there is attention lavished on a female player specifically because she is female, there is at least a vague undertone that she merits the attention because she's doing something one would tend to think she shouldn't be able to do, like a pig learning to play a Brahms piano concerto.

What would be most genuinely respectful of women, in my never-humble opinion, is silently accepting, as a simple matter of fact--so obvious that it's not even worth mentioning, let alone dwelling on--that women are just as capable of playing the game as men are.

To the media outlets and bloggers who focus on the Last Woman Standing, but completely disregard the Last Black Standing, I ask you to justify why you deem one worthy of your attention but not the other. Can you do it?

Incidentally, I have no specific hopes for who wins it all this year. All of the players I was hoping to make it fell by the wayside yesterday. (Fortunately, so did all of the ones at whose success I would have been nauseated.) I certainly don't care about the sex, race, or age of the winner. My only hope is that it's somebody who is a genuinely skilled player (unlike, say, Jerry Yang), and somebody who will not be an embarrassment to the game, as I consider several past champions to be (including Russ Hamilton, Phil Hellmuth, Jamie Gold, and Jerry Yang, though all for very different reasons).


Addendum, July 14, 2008

Here's a sampling of some of the giddy, giggly, breathless, brainless rhetoric that is being spewed on Michelle's performance solely because of her sex:

On the blog of "TinaB": "Women poker players all over the world are watching Tiffany make World Series of Poker history today!"

From commenter "sdjennifer" on the same post: "Gotta love a stong, skilled woman making it this far and hopefully all the way! ... Go Tiffany!"

From blogger "aviganola": "BTW - Tiffany Michelle is the last woman standing in the WSOP Main Event right now. They are down to 27, would love to see her make the last 9. Go Tiffany!!"

From Snuffy: "This could be the greatest thing in poker history. Bigger than Chris Moneymaker."

From the pokerdonkeysblog: "However Poker Donkeys! has found a player among the chip leaders that we believe could win it all. Tiffany "HOTCHIPS" Michelle! That's right, the only girl in the bunch is not only one heck of a player but she's also HOT! Poker Donkeys! fully supports "Hot Chips" on her way to winning the WSOP 2008. You go girl!"

From "liveplayer": "Poker can use a new ENERGY and this lady looks like she might make it happen! The writers all of the web - covering the event this year are LOVING the story behind this gal... I WISH nothing but the best for Tiffany Michelle - I'm behind her all the way! You go GIRL!"

From pablosplace: "I'll probably now be pulling for any American, but specifically, I'd like to see Tiffany "Hot Chips" Michelle, the lone female, make a deep run."

From albiezushi: "Over $9mil goes to this year's winner and I really hope that the only girl left in the event wins as that would be HUGE news--for not just the poker world but for the general media as well. It'd be great for poker and hey, she's not bad looking either...GO TIFFANY MICHELLE!"

From $mokkee: "Who isn’t rooting for her at this point?"

From Gaming Alerts: "There’s no telling what would happen to the poker world if a woman won the tournament, but many in the industry are excited by the prospect and believe it would be a positive for the game."

Jeffrey Pollack, Commissioner of the WSOP, as quoted in the Gaming Alerts piece: "If a woman made the final table...that would be terrific. And if a woman won, that would be terrific."

Hmmm. So, Mr. Pollack, I take it you think that a man winning would not be terrific. Either that, or your point is the rather idiotic, "It would be terrific if a man won and it would be terrific if a woman won." Please explain whether your point is the idiotic one, or the one in which you think it would, for some reason, not be "terrific" for a male to win.

I wonder if these people stop to consider that when they say they want Michelle to win because she is female, they are simulataneously telling the other 26 of today's contestants, "I don't want you to win, because you're a male." That is not one bit different than walking up to Michael Carroll and saying, "I'd glad you busted out. I wouldn't want you to win, because you're black."

On the other hand, I rather liked this thoughtful commentary from a blogger calling herself "sarawaraclara." My only disagreement is that rather than complain that her raises get insufficient respect because she is a female, she should relish that error on the part of apparently sexist male opponents, and learn to exploit it.