I didn't want to post again; don't want to cause trouble...but you do make some good points; I apologize for my abrasive manner of communication.
I am pretty stubborn guy and can jump to conclusions very often.

While I don't think I would feel comfortable participating in something I didn't believe; you statements and others help me realize that you can be against something and still participate in it...in certain areas of life.

I also think for people like myself(who require a lot of explanation); it good to respond to abrasive posts in a clear and constructive manner.

thx I do see where your coming from.

Drat. I missed this question earlier. I don't believe the WSOP keeps official stats on this, but there are a couple of things I would be interested to see from the WSOP numbers:

1. In 2010, what was the % of women in the field in the $1k open event that started the day after the $1k ladies event? How does that % compare to the % of women in the field in the other $1k open events in 2010. The reason I think this may be interesting is because of the proximity of a $1k ladies event to a $1k open event - although I am sure there are a number of ladies who day 2'ed the ladies event but would have played the open event if they busted day 1.

2. What is the % increase of women in the ladies event over the years, and how does that compare to (a) the % increase of women in the $1,000 - $1,500 NLH open events over the years and (b) the % increase of women in the Main Event. One can then look at the growth of the number of women in the ladies event and see if it is correlative to any increase in open events at both the more "introductory" level and in the main event.

3. The biggest issue that I see re: trying to understand the relationship between participation in ladies events and whether that leads to increased participation in open events is that with the myriad tournament options available to women (particularly during the summer in Las Vegas), it would be tough to track which other tournaments those women are playing in. I wonder if organizations like HHPT / LIPS / etc. have ever conducted surveys on the matter.

How would you feel about ladies' satellites into open events, as suggested earlier?

1. IQ matters. David Sklansky estimates that the average IQ in a casino poker room is 125. (I assume he's basing that on playing whatever his level is against regulars, not tourists).

2. Being mathematically inclined, or at least being a nerd, was THE deciding factor for me to play poker. I didn't know that my city had live games. There is no casino within 100 miles of me. I didn't even know anyone that played poker.

I got interested because I saw ubernerds like Dr. Chris Ferguson (Ph.D. in computer science/artifical intelligence) and Dr. Michael Binger (Ph.D. in theoretical phyisics) doing very well in WSOP/WPT tournaments.

I thought--These guys are nerds. I'm a nerd. They like math, and I like math. I bet I could be good at this! So, I went to the library to get books on poker, I eventually got a 2+2 book (Theory of Poker) and I learned about these forums.

I think that being mathematically inclined is an important factor in being good at poker, and I know for a fact that it can be a factor in being interested in poker in the first place. It's also worth noting that two of the top female players, Annie Duke and Vanessa Rousso, give their knowledge of game theory partial credit for their poker success. Rousso says that she "fell in love with game theory".

A good post, but perhaps you need to start a "Does IQ help a woman play poker?" thread to place it into.

hmmmm.... will we allow men's-only satellites as well?

(wo)Man, I can see this whole topic as problematic

My first impulse is to say that I think it would send an even worse message than a ladies event re: a woman's ability to play against men. The reason I think this is because it's a satellite into an open event where women are going to have to play against tables full of men. If I were to try to analogize the situation, it would be like having an affirmative action policy - i.e., we are only going to look at a certain category of individuals to fill a number of slots so that we can have a general group that has more representation from that certain category.

I might have to think about this one a bit more.

Yea, this is def a tricky one...
I'm assuming you have a legal background (from your convo w/ JMurder about books) which makes it more interesting and problematic for you, buf def interesting for this thread

I think that only applies if there are a limited number of seats and someone would get cut off by the AAWPP that satellites in.

But, if the field is large enough, will anyone really care? If so.... perhaps that is their "nit" sign....

Yes, I do have a legal background. It certainly makes a number of things problematic - like having to sign waivers at places where most people just sign them without reading them or trying to type coherent arguments to support your view when there is definitely no absolute correct view given the complexity of the situation. I'm glad it's been interesting for the thread. I feel that I've certainly learned a lot in the course of following it

It is not a perfect analogy, but opponents could make the argument that there's more opportunity for a woman to gain entry because she can play in both open satellites and ladies only satellites, which is like saying that affirmative action category individuals can gain entry under either traditional merit measures or affirmative action measures.

One thing that I thought about today is that if you assume as a whole that there's no significant skill differential of a woman player as compared to a ladies only satellite field and an open satellite field, you may actually be hurting the number of potential women participants in the main event by encouraging women to play in ladies only satellites.

Let's say that the satellites pay 2 seats per 10-person table. 100 women want to play satellites to the main event. If they play in ladies only satellites, there will only be 20 women participants that qualify via satellite. If they play in open event satellites (let's say 1-2 ladies per 10-person table), it is mathematically possible for way more than 20 women to qualify via satellite. By promoting ladies only satellites, you are GUARANTEEING that 80% of the women who would want to play in the main event (assuming each woman only plays one satellite), will not be able to qualify via satellite.

While it may sound like a good idea to some, it may effectively serve to limit the number of women participants in the main event.

What if, instead of focusing on the participation aspect of the game, we focus more on the training / education aspect of the game. If the goal is to have more women qualify via satellite, what about holding a ladies only training session that takes into account the specific structure(s) of the major qualifying tournaments - i.e., the Rio daily qualifying events and the major online qualifying events?

I just thought it is interesting that the argument is often made that Women's events are a gateway to Open events by people justifying them but no evidence is ever provided that it actually occurs.This seems like something that a survey could easily show.

It would also be interesting to see numbers for the cross over from internet to live play and to see if the percentages are vastly different for men and women.

I know this is anecdotal, but there was a Women's event at Foxwoods this weekend and there were lots more women playing cash games than is usual.

I'm not sure exactly how to figure this out (other than taking a poll), but I'd also be interested to see the number of women who would play in open events if no ladies events existed. The reason that I'm interested in this is because, assuming a person has a limited bankroll (which is a significant % of the population), if women are choosing ladies events IN LIEU OF playing in open events then the % of the field in open events is going to take a hit.

My wife falls into that category...she only plays in women only events unless we got to casino together. When she does go by herself for the women only tournament, she plays cash if she busts out early enough.

In the "women's tournaments may be a curse" category . . .

Something that I'm still trying to analyze is the behavior of certain women during last year's WSOP ladies event, and what message that sends about "proper behavior" during a poker tournament.

Player A is of one gender, and Player B is of a different gender. Player A does not like the fact that Player B is playing in the tournament.

1. Player A slaps Player B across the face.

2. Player A repeatedly berates and threatens Player B.

3. Player A uses media connections to publish a statement from a WSOP official indicating that anyone of Player B's gender who played in the tournament may be banned from future WSOP events.

4. Player A and many other players of that gender applaud any time someone of Player B's gender is eliminated from a tournament.

Each of these things occurred during last year's WSOP ladies event, with Player A being female and Player B being male.

What if the genders were reversed?

I understand that some women are uncomfortable about playing in open events because they've encountered Example #2 above or similar treatment. However, the old saying goes "two wrongs don't make a right."

My concern is that the behavior by certain women during the WSOP ladies event may serve as a signal to certain men that such behavior is acceptable (i.e., "When we play in ladies events, they do that stuff, so they shouldn't complain when we do the same thing in open events").

Does the fact that this occurred during an event that was marketed to women give women such an expectation of a gender-segregated environment that any untoward behavior directed at males is warranted/acceptable?

oh, CK. You have correctly brought up such tedious, yet absolutely warranted points that I have been avoiding because it goes so far beyond poker and into complex gender and equality issues. Glad you're here to do it

I am not familiar with this indicent, so I have no idea how/if it was resolved.

#1 is assualt, in front of many witnesses, and could have (should have?) led to an arrest. I don't think that a man hitting a woman, or even a man hitting another man, would have been allowed.

Whether or not law enforcement was involved, at the very least the TD should have had the offending player ejected from the casino. It should be standard operating procedure that any type of assault, including striking someone or throwing something at them, should be an automatic ejection. Is that what happened?

As far as the discrimination issues, if the tournament rules state that only females can play, then male players should not have been allowed. If not, the guy can play. It males were disallowed, remedy could have been sought in the courts, if someone wanted to push it that far. But I'm not sure that the courts would want to open than can of worms, which could have implications, for example, for every bar, club, or business that has a "ladies night".

Whatever the underlying issues, someone never should have been hit, period.

My understanding of the situation is that you legally can't have an "open" event that discriminates by sex. Therefore, the WSOP couldn't legally prevent a man from playing in the women's event.

I'll note that a 2+2 mod was one of the males who played (in drag). He's well respected on 2+2 and has excellent relations within the administration of 2+2 (to the point of wearing a 2+2 patch in a tournament).

His reasons for playing can be found here.

http://www.pokerlistings.com/blog/sh...ideo-statement

My understanding is that the person who slapped the guy was issued a one-orbit penalty.

In the state of Nevada, it is illegal for the WSOP to prevent men from playing in the ladies event solely on the basis of their gender. From what I understand, in the past when a man has attempted to play in the WSOP ladies event, Jeffrey Pollack pulled that person aside and asked him to reconsider his decision to play. This past year, however, there were many more instances of strong-arm tactics used by WSOP staff to "discourage" men from playing (including subjecting several guys to questioning and searches when they attempted to register). Seth Palansky hinted to CardPlayer that the WSOP might seek sanctions against any man who played in the ladies event (http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news...eries-of-poker). Nothing came of that because the likelihood of adverse consequences to the WSOP (lawsuit, Nevada Gaming sanctions) probably would have been high.

SFD isn't the first person to play a ladies event in drag. Some of the Tiltboys played the 2008 WPT Ladies Championship in drag.

Because it will make JM3 smile, I'll also post some links:

NVG discussion of SFD's participation in the 2010 WSOP ladies event: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...s-come-805659/

MTTc discussion of 2010 WSOP ladies event:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/61...-limit-805640/

Sounds like the tournament directors handled it very poorly...I think that is the main issue with causing people to think it is acceptable behavior.

So I wouldn't say the event itself cause it, but the one lady got off the hook in this case.

I was thinking more about the issue of women equality. I worked in a fairly labor intensive job for about 5 years. There were 100+ men and 2 women working there.

Out of those years, I never noticed any discrimination to the women or behind their back. Nor did I hear about any. They were treated no differently then the men. The men were all hard working blue collar guys and so were the ladies.

At previous jobs in my younger years, the women were always treated in a more degrading manner. More sexual innuendos and catering to etc...

So why was this?

The only thing I can think of is that it is not the behavior of men, but the behavior of ladies that cause these issues.

If that apply to this case, then you may very well be right, that these events do cause more issues.

Did you really just go there?

Someone should have been thrown out of the ladies' event... and it wasn't the guy.

I love this post. I've been in a lot of sitations where I wasn't accepted at first, but turned that around by proving myself.

To earn extra money I once had a second job working for the Labor Ready temp agency. Some of the jobs were very hard manual labor, and the agency only wanted to send out young males to those. I was the oldest guy (age 45) that was sent out, there was a woman around 20 who was also sent, and I heard the grumbling from the site bosses that neither of us were going to make it through lunch.

One guy quit at lunch time, and the other one said he wasn't coming back the next day. There were both guys in their 20s.

The rest of us stayed on the job for the entire week, and despite crude comments about the "young chick", and comments like "I hope the old guy doesn't die on us", we both hung in there and earned everyone's respect.

just because you are better at poker than someone doesnt mean you are "smarter" than them (whatever that means). i ran a mensa poker game for a while and some really smart people are pretty bad at poker even when they work hard at it.

im pretty sure most of the tournaments at Lucky Chances are asians only...no one seems to care.