It may be the case that I'm an old Southern gentleman with distinctly Southern manners who has definite ideas about how men should behave toward women. So it enraged me a bit when I read the account by "Maridu" about how she was treated last year in the WSOP ladies event. Reading that account led me to post the following response over in the NVG forum.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=168

I'm curious as to how you ladies feel about this? Am I off base or too old and "out of touch" with the modern world? Is it unreasonable to expect Caesar's/Harrah's to do a better job of cracking down on men who enter the ladies event? (I don't think I'm out of line, but maybe that's because I'm a craggy old Southern gentleman.)

Oh, by the way, I hope one of you ladies wins the Main Event this year! I've been "predicting" it for years, so this year will be just fine.

Ask Shaun Deeb. I'm sure he could cook up another line of B.S about why he played the ladies event. If he had told the truth and said him and his mates where drinking one night and thought it would be great to enter the womens event i would have more respect for him, but no he did it for womens rights......

http://youtu.be/l_Mfhzf7dsI

Just imagine if a guy wins it

My understanding of the issue is that Caesars believes that they can not legally prohibit men from playing in the Ladies' event. A more nuanced view could be that the cost of litigating the case exceeds the value of keeping the Ladies' event to females only, since only a few men feel they need to play in the event.

As best as I can figure it out from public statements, the reasons for a man to play in the event are:

1. Excluding people in mental competitions where physical strength doesn't matter for reasons of gender is inherently wrong, no matter what gender is excluded. Playing in such events highlight the discrimination in many other areas, so is a public good.

2. A women's field is weaker than most other WSOP fields, so it is +EV to play.

3. There's no such thing as bad publicity, so anything that gets me noticed is worth it.

Pokers players as a whole don't show much interest in the taking stands that don't profit them directly. There are a few, but the ones that are male that come to mind don't play in the Ladies event. You may draw your own conclusions.

Point of disclosure: I am a mod for this forum, but am not female.

that would be very sad if he did....

Sighs..

Guy asks me if I coach, we are friends and he's one of the only people to bring hot girls to our BBQs, so I told him we can talk hands anytime for free.

Said "wish you'd consider not playing the Ladies Event though," as he played it last year and was intent on playing it this year and he responded that it was a fair deal for him to skip it.

I must be a really good coach.

venice:

OK, if Caesar's is worried that they might get sued by Shaun Deeb and morons like him, there are other things that Caesar's can do to discourage men from entering the event. While I normally think rude and obnoxious behavior should be punished with penalties - a policy which Caesar's/Harrah's seems loath to enforce - an exception should be made for the ladies event.

Women playing in the event who are so inclined should be given wide latitude to ridicule and make fun of any man who enters the event and just happens to be seated at their table. Taunts such as "Shaun, you have a run in your stockings" and other jabs that elicit laughs and giggles should be looked upon with benign neglect by the tournament director and floor manager. Some of the ladies, probably most of the ladies, won't feel comfortable playing that role, so that's where Kathy Griffin comes in. Put any male who enters the ladies event on a table with Kathy Griffin and watch the sparks fly. It will surely be "Must See TV" on ESPN when Ms. Griffin slices and dices some hapless guy who thinks it's +EV to play in the ladies event. Heck, ESPN might even wind up with a WSOP highlight program that non poker players actually watch. (I still remember the Seinfeld episode where Kathy Griffin skewered Jerry Seinfeld.) She would be a natural for putting hapless male nerds who think it's "cool" to enter the ladies event in their place.

Being ridiculed on nationwide television may appeal to a handful of these morons, but it may not be so funny when they find themselves being pointed out and laughed at everywhere they go and having their parents ask them why they entered a ladies event? To make it really entertaining, well known spectators on the rail (like say Barry Greenstein?) might award a $100 on-the-spot cash prize if a lady zaps one of these guys with a side splitting putdown. Maybe a $1,000 grand prize could be awarded for the best zinger of the tournament. (Kathy Griffin would probably be the odds on favorite to pick up the Grand Prize for "Best Insult of a Male Player Entering the Ladies Event" award.)

Since a relative handful of men are determined to ruin the ladies event, biting humor (at their expense) may be the only way to deal with this problem. Since ESPN likes to do touchy-feely "interviews" where they try to humanize players, especially for the Main Event, they can have a segment called "Men Who Entered the Ladies Tournament" and ask them about their feminine side.

I'm very for Ladies events and very against men entering them. I don't think however that bracelets should be awarded for any restricted events, even if you qualify it as not being an open event. Award a ring or a small trophy, anything but a bracelet. I really wish they would offer a Gentleman's 1k event on the same day as the Ladies Event to dissuade men from being the douchebags that so many want to be. I get a bit sick and tired of 1st world men saying that they feel discriminated against. PS: I am male.

Congrats to this idiot, Jonathan Epstein, who has a cash in a Ladies event on his poker CV.

I mean, let's be honest... the cash in the ladies isn't "on his poker CV," it IS his poker CV. And that's just the thing - all these douchebag guys claiming to play in the interest of equality are just playing because they want to pick up some extra EV given they suck at poker. It's a sad existence when you constantly sacrifice scruples for money, but 'tis the world we live in where many usually do.

ok let me preface this with the fact that I am male and have played 2 large wsop packages the last 2 years and plan to play the main this year. Never have I even considered playing in the ladies event.

That said, do none of you find it a bit hypocritical to on the on hand be upset at males for playing it for the extra ev while being ok with females selling action on 2p2 openly advertising that it will be extremely soft and charging more MU than normal? Like on the one hand you're claiming that men should leave it alone and make the women feel welcome play a game just with ladies to not have to deal with any sexist comments and on the other you're perfectly fine with a female openly saying that essentially girls suck at poker and profiting off that. Now I realize that's not exactly what they're saying but ask the average female who comes to play only the ladies event how they feel about female pros selling action and getting more money because the ladies event is easier and see how they react to that.

So is it ******ed as it is right now for men to play the ladies event? Absolutely. But I think the better alternative to accomplish the stated goal would be to have a beginner's event rather than a ladies event and this way anyone who has played 0-5 (whatever the acceptable number is) wsop events is allowed to play the beginner event. You'd still have cash game pros selling action in the easier event at higher MU, but at least most people would realize it is an easier tournament and that wouldn't look as bad. But this way you'd actually welcome people, both male and female, who haven't played much before. They could get used to the game with other people and I'd bet a lot that the average female would get much less abuse at such a tourney as well compared to an open tourney, although I could be off on that.

I am 100% in favor of the ladies event and think men should not play. However, I think it is wrong for the women to clap and cheer when men get knocked out. We want to be respected so we should behave respectfully. Two wrongs don't make a right.

Good luck to all the ladies playing!

I believe in this 100x. I think it's fairly ironic that a lot of women don't play more tournaments because of how poorly they are treated when they go to play but when they have a tournament that they believe is 'theirs' their first instinct is to boo and jeer at the men who enter.

Treat em nicely even if you don't like their motivations or their actions. I don't understand why that's so hard when you are fighting against that EXACT SAME PROBLEM on the other side.

You probably missed in your research that he played in the 2010 event in drag. A male who has decided to play in the Ladies event has already accepted that they are going to get insulted no matter what anyway. In fact, the insults are really just feeding into the idea that there is no bad publicity. If there was a really good insult, it would actually be a positive for some of them who entered.

Nor is ignoring or selective enforcement of the rules in a poker game ever a good idea for the host. The WSOP has struggled with that perception for years. It is one reason that their main sponsor for the event is a beef jerky brand.

venice, Linda, and gobbo:

OK, I suppose I went overboard and got a little crazy about this. Linda is right - attempting to insult, ridicule, and shame guys into staying out of the ladies event probably won't work. (I suppose there's a certain type of "man" who will actually thrive on that kind of attention.)

I come from a place and a time where it is simply "unmanly" for any male to do something like entering a ladies tournament. Men my age look at a guy who does something like that and wonder what other "problems" he might have?

I've watched a few "ladies only" poker tournaments. A really cool dynamic occurs once it's down to the final table. You'll notice husbands and significant others off to the side quietly chatting among themselves. (They're usually gathered in a small group whispering back and forth to each other.) There's an intense sense of pride among husbands to see their "better half" doing so well. For husbands and significant others, it's fun to watch your better half as a spectator and cheer her on to victory. It's the kind of thing that makes that next kiss really nice. In a ladies event, sticking a man on the final table ruins that ambience. Anything that destroys that dynamic is unwelcome.

I feel the word "problems" needs an explanation.

Are you in 100% favor then that men are smarter than women?

Last year, there was talk going around that the WSOP was going to exploit some interpretation of "selective promotional pricing legislation" (i.e. the law that explicitly states "Ladies Night"-type promotions at bars are not illegal) in order to keep men out of the event this year.

I heard nothing of any male players playing, nor did I see any on the WSOP website.

Did they actually implement anything this year? For that matter, did any men actually play which I just missed?

So the only way to support a ladies event is to believe that the average female is dumber than the average male? Really?

Wouldn't that logic also suggest that a number of skilled female poker players that are strongly in favor of this event and strongly in favor of keeping it segregated are also, in fact, acting out of financial self-interest, irrespective of their claims of the "proud tradition of the event" or "it's good for the game" or any other such altruistic-sounding reason?

That's the only way that a ladies event can't be hypocritical with respect to both federal legislation on equal access and basic human notions of equality; this doesn't prevent anyone from supporting it, as many people openly acknowledge the double standards and support it all the same.

AFAIK the WSOP did not do anything other than "discouraging" male players from playing... If a guy wanted to play, he could, and he paid the same price.

About a dozen guys entered, and at least one (Brandon Uhl) cashed.

No. You make a special event for a certain group of people in order to make that group play the game more. You have the same situation in chess, where it's just much less common for females to play, so you make special female-only events to try to drive female interest in the game.

This has nothing to do with thinking one gender is smarter than the other. This has nothing to do with federal laws on equality. This is all about promoting your game to those who currently don't play it much to make it more popular overall.

I get that. You still haven't addressed the fact that this line of thinking (whether good or bad, I'm not touching that issue with a ten foot pole) is hypocritical with respect to basic human understanding of what "equality" is.

Incidentally, since you know about chess, I'm sure you know that the runaway greatest female chess player in history believes as I do on the subject.

Agreed, as most people who believe in equality would. Year after year, female players cash in proportion to their representation. I believe we both agree, women do not NEED segregated poker tournaments.

First of all, it clearly does have to do with federal laws on equality, given that they are still required to allow men to enter based on those laws.

Secondly, the federal laws on equality state that discrimination against gender lines is illegal. Those who support women's only tournaments are interpreting those laws as either "discrimination against WOMEN is illegal" (but okay against men), or they simply feel they do not apply and that any private business should be allowed to market in a discriminatory manner along protected categories.. Again, I'm not saying anything whatsoever on whether this should be acceptable or not, only pointing out a fact: with respect to laws on federal equality, supporting a business's right to have women's-only tournaments is hypocritical.

Then why do they not spread gender-neutral beginner tournaments, which would get more exposure for more players with less effort? We both know the answer. They are not trying to get it more popular overall, they are trying to get it more popular specifically with women. You were right the first time.

And again, I understand the motivation. I am not questioning it in this thread, that argument has been hashed to death anyways. I only emphasize that to support these tournaments is demonstrably hypocritical with respect to the notion of equality as it is understood on a very fundamentally human level. If women are of equal worth as humans and are of equal skill at a discipline, they are to get equal treatment, not "either equal or preferential, whichever they'd prefer" treatment.

She's one player who's chess skills are irrelevant here. From what I've read, female chess players are split on this issue.

I have no problem allowing men to enter the tournament so long as it's still billed as a Ladies Event. I don't think men should play in the event, but barring them wouldn't be right either. So this really does have nothing to do with federal laws.

The reason to increase poker's popularity among women is to make it more popular overall. What else do you think they are aiming for?

As for gender-neutral beginner tournaments, that would be great, and I have seen a casino (Foxwoods?) do that. I'm sure the WSOP would do it too if they thought it would be popular/interesting enough, and if they could solve the issue of defining a beginner (the casino I saw it at was for people who signed up for a player's card and had logged under some number of hours I think, but that might not be well-defined enough for something more important like the WSOP).

Well if you've seen all the arguments before, you must have misinterpreted some of them because you can easily have non-hypocritical reasons for supporting this tournament, as I have explained in my views above.

AFAIK douchebag men that entered were not reported on. Good move by PokerNews.

Yeah I guess that was deliberately done, the WSOP coverage didn't mention anything about it. Fair enough idea, will work until there's another Jonathan Epstein. What are they going to do, say the final table started 8 handed?