Don't know if this is the right forum for this, but I don't really see a better one.

I'm an openly gay man that has just started playing live poker after playing online for a couple of years. I'm not flamboyant, but anyone with "gaydar" probably can figure out that I'm gay.

Anyway, I was at a 1/2 table and won a guys stack with top boat vs. bottom boat - his third or fourth BI that he had lost in about an hour. When it was done, he looked around the table and announced, "what a ******y play". (the ******y word starts with an f, if that helps).

Now I'm not a wallflower when it comes to defending myself in real life - I've worked in politics for 15 years and am pretty good at standing up for myself - but for some reason I froze and just let the comment go. I have to admit, being at a live table for the first time had me nervous enough as it was.

A little later, the younger guy sitting next to me leaned over and whispered "you okay, man?". I shrugged and said yeah, I'm fine, but honestly I was a little shaken by it.

I admit there is part of me that is upset with myself for not saying "no, not a ******y play, but one made by a gay man - that just took your stack.", but I think in reality that would have just escalated the situation.

How do people here handle these sorts of incidents when they happen? I imagine women playing live face this more often that I will, but I'd love to get some perspective.

I'm sorry that happened to you, and I'm fairly certain this forum is fine for such a discussion.

Personally, because of my background and experience, I'm very likely to confront someone head on when I feel slighted in such a way. It doesn't happen often, and almost never happens a second time because the offender usually ends up feeling so embarrassed and retarded by the time I'm done with them. I think that's necessary, if very hard to do - people who use hate speech will continue to do so as long as people remain silent, and unfortunately it's usually up to the victims to speak up first, and say hey, that's offensive, knock it off.

I've said a couple of times in different forums and threads, however, that these type of personal attacks won't disappear until the average hetero GUYS start fighting against them. Everyone understands the heat of the moment, but there is (or should be) a line that you don't cross, but it gets crossed all the time because there are still people who think calls gay men f*** and making sexually explicit comments about women are fine, because they are funny or just because those insults haven't yet been culturally elevated to the equivalent of calling a black individual the N word. Until words like f** are widely recognized as the hate speech they are, such incidents will continue to occur.

In a previous thread the suggestion was made to call for the floor and request a seat change when you feel insulted, and make it perfectly clear why you are requesting the change. Your comeback, had you been comfortable making it at the time, should also have shamed him. Unfortunately, though, there is always a slight risk of these things happening when you play live.

Rest assured that there are poker players out there, though, who would have stepped up and told anyone at the table saying things like that they were out of line, whether they knew (or suspected) that a gay man was at the table at all. I know I would have. It's pretty easy to say something like, "That's not cool, there's no need to use language like that." I encourage everyone, particularly the average guys who make up 95%+ of the poker world, to not tolerate blatant sexual or homophobic comments when they occur (which, fortunately, I do think is a relatively rare percentage of the time). It's too easy to think that a woman who complains about someone at their table constantly commenting on her breasts or her sexual proclivities is just an uptight bitch (or, and I usually want to choke anyone who ever implies this, "on the rag"). I mean, come on, loosen up, it's just a joke, everyone is hear to have a good time, right?

Except that I don't think calling gay men f*** is all that funny or entertaining, myself. And if you don't think so either, you should speak up.

You know, I think I was just kind of stunned. I mean, I was nervous as it was being my first time playing live, and the dealer on top of that wasn't the friendliest guy around, really pushing for decisions while I was trying to think about what I wanted to do. Then when that comment came out, I wasn't even really sure if it was aimed at me directly at first or if it was an expression that the guy used regularly - I mean I imagine poker rooms aren't exactly the center of the PC universe. But the look the guy gave me told me that it was definitely aimed at me.

I'm just kicking myself now and feeling weak for not standing up for myself, ya know? There was some non-verbal support for me around the table and I noticed a couple of younger guys went out of their way to chat with me after the incident (and an older woman at the table kept giving the guy what can only be described as the look of death every time she bet in a pot with him). But the truth is it made me uncomfortable enough to leave earlier than I would have otherwise, and looking back that makes me feel even weaker about my response.

I do like your straight forward approach. "That's not cool, there's no need to use language like that." works better than the pithy one liner and also puts me in control of the situation by drawing a line without inviting escalation. Thanks for the input.

I've been a live player for quite sometime and have never been disrespected by a guy while playing. I imagine if it did happen it would actually amuse me. Its indicative of several things, most important reason is you have valuable information given to you by your opponent. He is on tilt thinking irrationally, perhaps he's going to change his play to try to compensate, he's going to try and make you his target, these are all likely possibilities.
When I play poker I look at it as a business. You are always going to have difficult customers or clients and might be subject to abuse. At the end of the day though my goal is my goal and I try to attain it by any means necessary, using all the information that I have to my advantage.
I completely understand that there are things that are completely out of line and that the sensitivity threshold is different for anyone. In your case this obviously affected you greatly. You made a good decision leaving earlier than you would have because you shouldnt let negativity get in the way of your success. That guy is a douchebag and you should feel sorry for him for having such a rotten soul. He's such a great player he has to berate people at a 1/2 table no less? Please!
Im sorry this happened to you and affected you in a bad way, I hope that if this occurs again you are able to defend yourself the way you wanted to.

I have been called a multiple nasty things at the table, including the word you mentioned. I have also been threatened to be "taken outside" and have "my ass kicked" multiple times. If you are playing for fun, you shouldn't take the verbal abuse and should talk to the floor/security about it, because stuff like that is definitely hurtful and will kill the fun atmosphere of a table. If poker makes up a decent amount of your income, I would just let the verbal stuff slide, because usually the players who use these derogatory terms are some of the worst players in the room. What's the old expression? Its "easy to take a lot of abuse when the person is hosing you with money"?

There is something to be said for this. This guy was definitely the table ATM, and I admit I knew I had him beat and also knew he would call my reraise with the rest of his stack, so in terms of poker, I really didn't want this guy to leave the table - for my sake and for the few other players that saw him for what he was. Truth be told, I was up $227 in just three hours at my first live game ever in no small part because of this player and the very nice lady that was on vacation who kept small stack rebuying and giving her chips to the rest of us. So in terms of poker, it was a nice few hours, and if I'm focused on the goal of parting players with their money, he's the type of player who I would hope I'd be seated with regularly.

I think I'm more mad at myself for not standing up for myself in some way than actually feeling threatened by the guy.

I wouldn't be too down on yourself, most people are just socially conditioned to do almost anything to avoid making a scene or do anything that could be construed as rude. Even when we have every right to be mad about something, or speak up when we've been treated unfairly, most of us tend to let some of those things slide, myself included.

My mom asked why I didn't speak up for myself recently when doing so would have prevented significant physical pain on my part (long story short, a morbidly obese guy passed over other empty seats and ended up in the window seat in my row on a crowed flight, forcing my boyfriend into me and pinning my bad hip against the armrest for 5+ hours) and I was flabbergasted - it never occurred to me to say "no". Obviously your case is very different, but still, we are socialized from a very young age to be polite and not cause a scene, and that can be very difficult to overcome in an unfamiliar setting.

I'm glad you got some nonverbal support from others at the table, although I would hope that someday you'll either get verbal support or, better yet, wouldn't need it at all because idiot like that will just keep their mouth shut.

First I'm assuming he was not sure you are gay. So let's say you are not gay. But you are a guy more on the "feminine" side. If he was mad, he would've said that to you, gay or not gay. The only problem was that you took it personally.
It there a difference in calling someone f**, idiot, stupid, pussy, etc,?

You should feel (imo) as angry as he was calling you an idiot. And then why get angry, you have his money, right?

You want him to be mad, but not mad enough to leave. I don't know if you should've said something, the first think in my mind is something like: "yeah man, I know, it's a pain in the ass".
The important thing is for you not to tilt and take his and other's money. Simple.

You're right - I know I'm conditioned not just by my upbringing but by my profession to be careful about my words - and in the case of my profession taking verbal abuse without responding is part of the job.

I also think that this was my worst fear walking into the poker room, aside from making a fool of myself with my play of course. Having it actually play out - even in the weak way he did it - was mortifying at the time. I'm definitely glad I left because I know my play would have suffered. Who knows, maybe that was his point?

That said, I think hearing what people on here have to say is helpful and is building my confidence back up to be able to go back next weekend and try again. Of course, the $70+ per hour win rate doesn't hurt the confidence meter, either...

Yeah, that wouldn't hurt. Go get 'em!

Really, I think this situation, as unfortunate as it is that it did happen, is pretty rare (at least in my experience). It's pretty likely that you could go a dozen or more times without experiencing anything like it again.

If it were to happen again, I'd consider talking to the floor privately - obnoxious bigots who make you uncomfortable to the point that you would consider going someplace else is certainly something they should address.

And while I understand people have differing opinions on this, I disagree that hate speech of any type should just be shrugged off. Calling someone a f** is on par, IMO, with the N word. There's a world of difference between getting frustrated and calling someone a donkey or an idiot and upping the ante to slurs based on race, sexual orientation, or gender. Allowing such things to slide allows them to flourish. Mentally being able to shrug it off is good for me in the short term (the internal dialogue of "wow, what an idiot, this guy must be on major tilt and I can stack him" is certainly healthy for your own sense of well-being), it does nothing to correct the long term problem.

I understand lol it's a casino don't get so worked up, the PC police are ruining everything, but I think it's a fallacy to compare this to a job where part of the description happens to be taking a certain amount of abuse (and speaking as someone who had that job for six years as a cop, I know whereof I speak). If I'm at a poker table, whether it's my job or just for pleasure, I'm also a customer of the casino, and as such I have a reasonable expectation that the casino will do their best to ensure I'm not mistreated while on the premises. And honestly, I have no idea why people think that just because it's a casino and ergo an adult environment, they should have carte blanche to act like they would with their friends, including making sexual, racist, or homophobic comments or jokes. Yeah, we're all adults, but you don't know me, you don't know my stance on such things, so WTF? How hard is it to not open your mouth and prove you're an intolerant bigot?

It's interesting how you are talking about toeing the line between standing up for yourself and hurting your profit - I had to make the same very weird choice when Men Nguyen was being a turd to me during the $10k PLO event at the WSOP. He was saying very homophobic comments out of nowhere, and I told him he was a jerk... but when the floor came over and asked what they should do, no one wanted him to get a penalty because he was by far the worst player at the table. I definitely felt a little bad after the fact that my desire for money/success got in the way of my ethics on the situation.

At the end of the day, I think you just have to stick up for you when it feels right, and when it doesn't for whatever situation, it doesn't always have to be you/us doing it. Like SGT says, we need people not in the community to stand up for others too. I will say that when I have spoken up to people being disrespectful, most people have agreed with me... even the ones you wouldn't expect. So my take on it is don't feel obligated all the time, but when you do want to, know you will have support from others even if they don't look the part.

+1, I know I would have. And I am sorry that this happened to OP & fslexduck.

Personally I find it much easier to defend someone else than myself in the sometimes nasty world of live poker. I think it is pretty easy to come up with something to say that will make the insulted player feel defended without spurring further hate-speech from the jerk, as SGT RJ points out. In this situation, I would have likely said "Hey, I thought we were having fun here; no need for name calling," with a smile.

As for blatantly sexist comments, I do get them from time to time, but consider them a tell that my opponent is not a super intelligent person and am mostly content to just take their money.

Okay, now that I've calmed down from the fact that my favorite pro poker player responded to one of my posts, I'll say something about what you said.

It is a tough line to toe, and one that honestly I wasn't really expecting to deal with, especially playing my first live game at a well known casino. That said, if I hadn't been worried about it happening in the first place so much I don't think it would have affected me so adversely.

On the positive end of all of this, though, is that it has forced me to realistically look at the situation as a real one that, albeit from what I've heard on here is very rare, I may have to deal with again. Now it's not just a fear to be dealt with in my mind, its a reality that can be acted upon. That in itself is empowering. As far as we've come in the LGBT community in my 40+ years, its still a reality that many of us have our fear radar up when we enter a place where we are surrounded by lots of straight men. I've got to find a way to keep my wits about me, yet still keep my poker bearings as well.

In reality, I was in a perfect poker situation. I had a player at my table that was spewing chips everywhere, was going on tilt, but was still buying in for more. Can't ask for much more than that. Hopefully it doesn't happen this way again, but if it does I think I'm better prepared for it thanks to everyone's help in thinking it through.

Its interesting that the situation you were in being talked about here on 2p2 was what gave me the nerve to bring this up in the first place. Thank you for all you do for poker.

Sorry. I don't agree with this. Would you feel better if he said "what a homosexual play"? It's the same thing.

"Allowing such things to slide allows them to flourish." That's just wrong and has a low level logic. You think that you can convince them to like you or what? Or you goal is only for him not to talk bad to you and that's it.
How many people use today ******? (you keep referring to it as the N word, that's "gay", saying ****** or saying the N word is the same thing <<he said the N word, what is that? oh he meant ******).

"And while I understand people have differing opinions on this, I disagree that hate speech of any type should just be shrugged off." You are not using the same measure here. You should not "understand", you should agree that people have different opinions. This is bias like allowing black people to call whites crackers.
People will hate and discriminate other people. And they are free to do so (this could be a long and could be another topic "freedom of speaker is not for the thoughts you love but rather for the ones you hate").

Words are just that: words. As long as it doesn't get physical or very aggressive anyone should be free to say anything. And you are free to defend. But think about it, what is your goal? SGT want for him not to say f**** or the "N word" aka ******, let's assume that you accomplish that and he will say other things that aren't related to your gender or skin color. He will find other things that would tilt you, because that is his goal. If you degenerate SGT thinking you will come here and say he called you a nit because you are gay. I mean come on, this is just trash talk at a poker table, this is not discrimination. Discrimination is when you can't get a job that you are good at because you are a woman, black, gay, white, asian, or you can't vote because you are a woman, or can't get married because you are gay.

Bottom line: You want to play with educated people that tolerate you or with the ones that are narrow minded?
1. If you are in a tournament and is the first time you see this guy you can speak with the floor and see what happens.
2. If you are in a cash game and he keeps donating why would you what him to leave and never play with you?

Most of the young guys that started playing poker live were discriminated by the majority (old guys), and were called names and so on.
What is disappointing to me is that you are seeing a difference between : "such a f**** play" and "this f***ing prick comes here and plays like a **** and wins".
Poker is about money, not about being the best, liked and so on.

Alinthecount, welcome to TWSS. I am glad that you have been able to voice your situation, receive input and a response from your fav player! She is def one of my favs as well

That being said, unfortunately, you have been introduced to the world of live poker as it actually is. Those of us who were hit the hardest by Black Friday not only lamented the fact that a huge (sole for many) portion of our income stream was gone, or that our entire bankrolls had disappeared, but that many of us were now to become live pros and with that comes dealing with and having to put up with the sometimes ugly nature of live poker and the people who play it. While I personally was about 90% online and 10% live prior to BF, I remember feeling grateful whenever I left a live tournament in a casino and was able to get back online the next day, not having to listen to people's dumb comments or thoughts about any and everything. So I can definitely sympathize with your situation on many different levels.

In addition, I think that yes, this forum is correct for you to post your experience in, as a lot of females will be able to identify with your situation, having been called derogatory names in for simply being a woman in a "man's" world of poker. I have even had my life threatened over a poker game in North Africa simply because I held my ground when voicing a rule infraction that was upheld by the floor in a country where women are not as respected as men.

I'm glad that you have found us and hope to hear about your future experiences!