Admittedly, this is probably my first time experiencing sexism in such overt ways in which I knew that it was sexism- and this was at the Ladies Event and during the $400 $50K Gaurantee on Sunday. During an otherwise great Ladies Event, a man who busted from the Main Event bought into the Ladies Event to "mess with the ladies" and because he could "pretend to be a woman since anything is allowed nowadays", he was overheard saying to his friend by one of the women who busted the Main Event and joined the Ladies Event. The man, Dave, went on to win the event after buying in three times, sparking conversation, controversy, and transphobia. And for me, and many other women, Dave's behavior is exactly why a Ladies Event is necessary and wanted. Dave is a misogynst and a transphobe, and he's representative of the culture of not only the men that play at the Hard Rock but how men act in general at all events towards women, whether cash or tournaments.
The narrative that he was a "quiet guy who just joined the Ladies Event and was bullied by the women simply for being a man" is not at all accurate. I was there, along with over 80 other women who came out to play in this and other events over the weekend and the Series. During the event, Dave consistently talked down to the women players and was miserable to them. One woman told me that he gave his number to her and said "call me so I can tell you how to play better", and this is after I heard him play a hand at my table and say "That's how you play 2's, ladies". I bring this up first because if this happened to ANYONE during ANY game and especially towards a man, a fight could very well break out from his behavior. The discourse around how people are tired of the negativity they feel is displayed by Berkey, Airball, and other high stakes poker streams are indicative that people don't actually like players who make the game a bad experience for everyone- so why is it okay for Dave, or any man, to do it towards women?
Ladies Events are important because during them you get to hear conversations never had at a regular event. For example, at this event, a woman was discussing playing cash at Hard Rock: "I sit down, get sexually harassed as usual, and then..." She says it casually, thrown in as just a fact of poker to discuss her broader point of how easy it is to just let men think she's no good at poker so she can take their money. It is known in the poker world that women will get harassed at tables and treated differently. This is the kind of discourse you would never hear during a regular event because women don't feel comfortable sharing those stories and the majority of poker tournaments are 99% men. I personally witnessed Dave feeding off making women uncomfortable. When he would win, he would have a terrible grin on his face, looking at women from the side of his eye, taking pleasure in any discomfort. And while, yes, poker players regardless of gender- including myself - can take pleasure in making our opponents uncomfortable with how we play a hand and when they don't know what to do, this wasn't that. Later on, I learned that during the event, Dave admitted he "stared down women to try and make them uncomfortable". Dave purposefully said and did things with the intent to make women feel uncomfortable- in what's supposed to be a space for women to feel comfortable! Dealing with sexual harassment from men during regular games and events is expected, but at a Ladies Event, women can breathe- for one event, we don't have to pretend we're ignorant to it. For some women, it's the only event they play. And now, some of the women reading the poker articles, seeing the comments on Twitter, or who were at the WPT this weekend might not ever join the game of poker or come back to it. The trolls, negativity, transphobia, and misogyny lifting up Dave as their saintly King has depressed the growth of poker, once again letting negativity be the highlight even though everyone insists they want to see positivity in poker. Bounties were not placed on Dave's head and he was not "bullied" simply on account of him wanting to play a Ladies Event. To say so is to oversimplify everything. Dave was feeding off of making women uncomfortable. He was intentionally dehumanizing, ridiculing, and objectifying women in overt and subtle ways, so much so some women didn't even realize the extent to which he was intentionally looking down on them, all under a guise of "I thought this event would be more inclusive". I shot back, "Yeah, you really care about inclusivity" to which I got no response. I didn't even know about the transphobic comments then, but just his attitude of buying in to "mess with the ladies" was enough. Any man who enters a Ladies Tournament isn't a decent guy, and they don't care about growing the game or about women feeling comfortable. If they really cared about being inclusive, they would let women have their event. Instead of bashing it, they would try to understand why women want and need Ladies events.
But when men like Dave lose, as I witnessed as I railed the Heads Up match, they start looking mighty threatening. The facade of Dave buying pizza and giving women gum at the tables suddenly disappeared quick when his 6-1 chip lead disappeared and he was knocked down to 7 Big Blinds. He was staring down his opponent in an angry way- as if he could seriously physically hurt her. And I'm not the only one that noticed. Luckily, the woman playing heads up with him didn't notice, but myself and almost the entire rail did. It made me uncomfortable just seeing him look at her that way. Yes, he would stare her down during a hand, trying to get a read, as is common in poker, but these looks weren't that. He would lose a hand and glare menacingly at her. Why should women have to put up with this in a Ladies Event?
Furthermore, when he would lose hands, he would berate the dealer. Ebony Kenney had to even say something to him. He angrily said to the dealer "This should of been over 3 hands ago, what are you doing?!" and other angry, berating, threatening comments to the dealer. While yes, there was a moment during the Final Table which he alluded to in a recent conversation with Ebony where I did see he seem to be listening to the rail conversation about women's experiences and looking like he did feel bad, that only lasted about three minutes. Most of the day, he was making the women around him uncomfortable. He said he would of "bought in 5 times into this event", and insisted on saying several reasons why he bought in, such as telling women "he bought in to find a girlfriend" or his go to favorite lie which was that he bought in because his friends dared him to and had already bought him the ticket, that he lost a bet in essence. Yet he bought in three times, on his own, and was overheard saying the real reasons he decided to buy in. He repeatedly said his friends "would never let him live this down" if he lost. On the first two buy ins, he wasn't playing well, and then on the 3rd buy in, he suddenly started taking it more seriously: it was a shot to his fragile ego to lose to /women/. Confront him about him thinking men are better than women at poker- as I did- and he'll deny it- and secretly to someone else at another table, he'll confirm it. And when I busted out and sat to talk to Ebony Kenney, he came over to say his friend had shown him the Twitter comments about how men were saying the women hated him and the bounties were unfair. He said please tweet out that I also put a $100 Bounty on myself and it was all done in good fun. Not said, was the fact- and I know this for fact - that he was using the bounties on him to his advantage to make women make bad calls as he was tilting them, evidenced by the fact he avoided me in all pots based off his asking the table "who should I avoid?" and when he did play a hand against me and went all in, he taunted "there's a bounty". I folded, and sure enough, he showed top pair and a flush draw. As he's talking to Ebony for her to make the case on Twitter about how the bounties are all fun and he's such a great guy for also putting a bounty on his head, I speak and say "Wait, weren't you just saying you would of bought in five times to *this* event when you were at my table?" The nice guy facade drops for a second. He'd been avoiding me at the tables, and I just kept calling him out. And here I was doing it again when he was trying to ensure the Twitter community saw him as the nice guy he so desperately wanted to be perceived as. He suddenly snapped at me, annoyed "Do you believe everything I say?!" A scoff, a roll of his eyes before he said, "Have you met my ex-wife?" He stormed off back to his Seat. Ebony was polite and stifled her laughter she later told me; I busted out laughing when he sat down. Unsaid as well is that I told someone not to call him "Santa", don't comment on his appearance- there's plenty of other things to say about him, I encouraged. And Ebony told others, and even me, prior to him being rude to the dealer, to not let our words against him turn into bullying. Some women agreed with him, as he pulled one to the side after break and said "I just don't understand why they're so upset with a man playing and being so mean to me" to which the woman replied "I know, it's ridiculous." He was a liar, a gaslighter, an angler, a misogynst, and the exact reason we need Ladies Events & why the WSOP charges 10X for men to join the Ladies Event and it doesn't count toward POY or the GPI.
And yes, it was thunderous applause in the room the first time he got knocked out- like it is at all Ladies Events when the "Freedom Fighters", as they're sometimes sarcastically referred to, get knocked out. That isn't unusual. The type of men who buy into Ladies Events are notoriously sexist and misogynistic. When I was at the Borgata Ladies Event in March, 3 men bought in, and there was applause everytime they were knocked out. And when I had the displeasure of sitting at a table with one of those men that day, he was rude towards the women. He wasn't Dave-level rude, but he still looked down on women and interrupted their conversations in the Ladies Event he bought into. And I got to see women stand up to him and call him out- something that's rare to see in any other space other than a Ladies Event. It's refreshing and builds confidence, not because a man was told off, but because a man who was being rude was called out immediately for his actions at the poker table and no one was putting up with dealing with the sexism. It signals to women that you don't have to put up with sexism, especially at a Ladies Event. For example, I heard Dave yell out, loud enough for me to hear at another table, "CAT FIGHT!" when two women were in a pot together, and kept repeating it, laughing, during the hand. You know where else I heard that term used? At a table in the $50K Guarantee the next day. And Dave isn't the one who said it. Rather than it being met with the disgust as it is at the Ladies' Events, it was met with laughter by the other men at the table.
I was one of two women at the table and someone got knocked out. The man in Seat 1 asked the table if we could square up, saying the dealer's elbows were bumping into him. So he scooted over next to the empty seat. A woman sits down next to Seat 1. And the Dealer immediately says, "Can you teach me how to do that trick?" And fist bumps him and follows it up with "I want to study under you", laughing with the man as him and the table took pleasure in openly talking about harassing the female player who had just sat down. I don't know if this bothered her, I don't think she was even paying attention to it. And they kept on. The guy in Seat 9- who left his tournament table randomly to walk up to me while I was an alternate and get super close to me to tell me how beautiful I was, and remembered my name when I sat down much later at his table- says, with another Dealer in the box, "I'm just a squirell trying to get a nut". The dealer fist bumps him. Seat 9 says "Maybe two nuts". The men at the table laugh, comfortable with themselves and this behavior. The woman was a shortstack, and she shoves all in. I look down at AK, and- remembering my motto of no friends at the poker table- I shove all in as well. The man in Seat 3, on the other side of the woman who was - combined with Seat 1- harassing the woman in Seat 2, yells "CAT FIGHT!" There's laughter. I speak up, as being at women's events and part of women's groups, has taught me to do. While everyone is folding around, I say to him "Maybe I should shout dog fight next time two men at this table are in a hand." Oh my, how the atmosphere suddenly changed. The man in Seat 3 gets defensive and no one is laughing anymore. Seat 3 says "C'mon, I didn't mean it like that, don't be mean..." After a pause, he says, "Why do you have to start things? I hope both of you women chop the pot, I really do, is that better?" Let's take a moment and analyze this. There had been other all ins at the table between men and Seat 3 never yelled out "cat fight". And why would he take such offense to me saying "dog fight" if "cat fight" wasn't meant to be offensive? If it was a joke, he would of laughed, but he and the rest of the men didn't laugh because it wasn't a joke. It was a demeaning remark made specifically because we were women.
Asked why the Floor didn't do anything during the Ladies Event, my original answer was the optics of it all: it would be seen as women getting the man kicked out, and the Floor probably didn't want to deal with that. But after my experience at the $50K and talking to the TD at MGM National Harbor, it's clear the Floor didn't do anything because that was the culture. The TD, Brandon Lavenia, at MGM National Harbor, said he would of kicked out Dave for all his remarks, and anyone else remarking in the same way, and the Dealers at the $50K would of been sent home and written up. The impression I got of the Floor at the Ladies Event from comments I heard and his attitude was a Floor who really didn't want to be there and seemed to think he was "saddled" with doing the Ladies Event. However, the woman who got second in the event told me "that the Floor was really supportive to me personally when I asked about why he could play (this is right when it started). He said he couldn’t stop him because it’s the law, but he wouldn’t mind if we all made his life difficult. When I jokingly said we should all discuss our periods and childbirth to the others at the table, the floor gave me a thumbs up. He seemed to be annoyed that Dave was there." I can't say with certainty how the all members of the Floor felt, but I can tell you I know the difference in what it looks like when the Floor and TD's purposefully want a welcoming environment for women: Dave's and Dave-like behavior just isn't tolerated. At Maryland Live! Casino and at MGM National Harbor, I feel welcome. Women feel welcomed. And one could say I've been with and am married to a popular poker player in Maryland, and to that I would agree and bring up two points: 1) My relationship status to a man you respect should not dictate whether or not I'm shown respect and 2) the staff at the Maryland Casino's make sure I'm respected. In fact, I used to have more problems at the Ladies Events then during regular events with the comments, especially concerning my infamous notebook. And Christopher Angelo wouldn't stand for it. He once told a woman they couldn't rail their friend that night any longer at one of Live!'s monthly Ladies Events because she would not stop harassing me and making comments about my notebook. I'm not saying it's exclusive to men, I'm saying men harrass women more. Yes, women do say things to and about women- because in every group of people, people are just people, and some people are assholes or ignorant, whether men or women or nonbinary. But that's not what this issue is about. This issue is specifically about men harassing women at the poker table. Highlighting one issue does not detract from another, and sometimes you have to focus on one issue. And if men are held accountable and their misogyny at the poker tables isn't accepted, then women's rude comments won't be either. The TD's and Floor in Maryland understand this, and I'm so grateful I get to be a part of these Casino's who know how to do it right. Thanks to Chris McCall, Chris Angelo, Mike Smith, Adam Boone, Patrick Spinella, and Brandon Lavenia, I rarely experience sexism or bigotry- and no one experiences egregious harassment either, and it's because it's not allowed. Even men cussing at other men or men being rude to the dealers, as Dave was during the Heads Up match, isn't allowed. Women being rude to women isn't allowed. Regardless of gender, being outright rude to another person for any reason is not allowed or tolerated. We don't even have to call the Floor over. If the Floor or TD or Director hears it, then it's taken care of. And if we take it to the Floor, we are not judged and fair rulings are issued. In fact, I've seen someone say that him and another male player aren't getting along as well as a woman say she was having an issue with another female player and so they requested or were offered not to be on that same table, and at Maryland Live! it was honored. An intentional atmosphere of respect must be created rather than a culture of misogynistic and otherwise dehumaizing, demeaning behavior be encouraged.
