As “The Poker Philosopher”, and in honor of one of my favorite non-poker blogs, I occasionally consider the ethical dimensions of a high-profile controversy in the poker community. Today, I consider the WSOP Ladies’ Event, which began yesterday and is scheduled to conclude tomorrow. Older editions of The Poker Ethicist are available in the archives.
Once again this year, a handful of men have entered the WSOP Ladies’ Event, citing a belief that a women-only event is discriminatory and a Nevada Gaming Commission policy that prevents the WSOP from actually excluding, rather than just discouraging, male players. Critics of these men say that they are only playing because they expect the field to be softer (no pun intended) than open events of comparable buy-in.
Do these men have a case for discrimination? Is it ethical for the WSOP to offer an event that excludes (or at least attempts to exclude) players based on their gender?
It is. This event serves not to exclude but to include.
Segregation is reprehensible when it carries with it a “badge of inferiority” or assigns privileges and opportunities to people based on factors beyond their control. This is not the case here, where men have 50+ other WSOP events, including numerous other $1000 buy-in events, to play. Significantly, every single one of these is a male-dominated affair. Any male player would be hard-pressed to demonstrate how the existence of a single Ladies’ Event harms him personally. The purpose of this tournament is not to push men away from the game but to draw women in.
Historically, only about 3% of players in the main event have been women. Walk into any poker room at any hour of the day and it’s easy to see that women are in the distinct minority. There may be reasons why poker is intrinsically more appealing to men than to women, but surely it is not thirty times more appealing. There must be other reasons for women’s underrepresentation at the poker tables.
Granted, as a man, I am not the best spokesperson for this cause, and it is not my intent to speak for female players or to claim that my observations are perfectly consistent with their experiences. In my experience, though, a female poker player is virtually guaranteed to get comments at the table. These range from relatively innocuous banter (“That’s a big raise for a little lady”) to outright sexual harassment. Casinos may be empowered to stop the worst of it, though they generally don’t, but on the whole there seems to be no avoiding the fact that a female poker player must deal with comments and attention directed at her because of her gender.
Granted, needling and table talk can be part of the game. I don’t mean to argue that women are necessarily entitled to a poker game free of such talk or that males who “fold to the pretty lady” ought to be penalized in anyway. I do think, however, that a desire to avoid such situations keeps many women from playing live poker, and that’s an unfortunate outcome.
Having more women playing poker is valuable in a number of ways. For one, it’s generally good for the game when more people, whoever they are, play. There are a wider selection of games available and more money in the poker economy. Women represent a tremendous, largely untapped market into which the game could expand. This is a worthy goal for the WSOP to pursue, and if they believe that a Ladies’ Event will help them to accomplish it, then they are justified in hosting such an event.
Second, appealing to a broader pool of players is a good thing. Our game is embattled in many parts of the world right now, and winning hearts and minds will require demonstrating that poker is a game with mass appeal, not an unhealthy fixation for criminals and degenerates. There’s a reason that the Poker Players Alliance repeatedly chose Annie Duke to testify before Congress, and it’s because as a mother of four she portrays a wholesome image.
the Ladies event is not bringing more women into the WSOP. If that were the case we would expect the % of women playing in open WSOP events to have grown over the years and that is just not the case. The % of women entering open WSOP events has remained pretty steady at 3 to 5% of the field
Over 1000 women played in the Ladies’ Event last year. Of course some of these women probably would have played a different event has this one not been available, but many of them surely would not have played at all. Whether they go on to play open events in the future or not, they are still playing at a higher level and stepping up their involvement in the game. They may be more likely to host home games, to play at their local casinos, and to talk about and share the game with friends. When people learn that respectable folk like their friends and neighbors play poker, the stigma that the game still faces in some circles will be broken down.
Duke also asks,
“Why is there a Ladies Event if poker is measuring mental acumen? Are we saying there is a difference between the intellect of men and women that means that somehow we need a separate championship event just for the women? What is that really saying about how we view women in comparison to men on the mental playing field?”
To my knowledge, no one has said this. It’s possible that the event had its origins in some patronizing thinking, but these days I’m not aware of any proponent who argues that women need their own tournament because of some mental deficit relative to their male counterparts. The Ladies’ Event is a marketing tactic designed to draw women into the game, not to demean them or to marginalize male players in any way. If the argument is not that women can’t compete with men but rather that many choose not to for reasons that have nothing to do with a perceived inferiority, then it makes no statement about the skills or capabilities of female players.
The World Series of Poker is about a lot more than crowning the best of the best these days. The WSOP is now the world’s largest poker festival and the dream destination for millions of recreational players. The smaller buy-in tournaments are where amateurs get a chance to play for life-changing money and rub elbows with their heroes from TV. If a Ladies’ Event can encourage more women to have these experiences, then that’s good for the game and everyone who plays it.
13 thoughts on “The Poker Ethicist: WSOP Ladies’ Event”
Replace all the feminine nouns and adjectives above with their corresponding words for people of color and see if you still feel that this is just some harmless marketing ploy.
In any case, the WSOP Ladies Event exists primarily for the wives/girlfriends/mothers/etc of the men, especially the casino’s favorite whales, who play in the open events. The rest of the entrants are experienced players, many of them professionals. All it does is draw women who already know how to play and who do play against men, just not in the big buy-in tournaments. It’s not promoting the game among women. If anything, it may be sending the opposite message.
I could write at length on the subject of women-only events but the arguments have mostly been made elsewhere. The short version is, they haven’t done any good at all, but they have the potential to do harm by sending all the wrong messages and by giving (some) men cover to not do anything about the persistent misogyny and sexism in the poker world. When there is the potential to do harm with no apparent “greater good” being served, I think by definition that constitutes unethical behavior.
I do want to point out that there’s an inherent sexism in assuming that men playing in high-buy in events is “normal” behavior and that women not playing is the sign of some sort of “problem” that must be “fixed”. This is using male behavior as the baseline and regarding deviation from it as, well, deviant.
In this case, it’s even worse than that, because playing in high buy-in tournaments isn’t even normal male behavior.
Statistically, the “normal” behavior is to not play in high-stakes tournaments. There are tens if not hundreds of millions of male poker players, yet only a few thousand play in high-stakes tournaments. By any sane metric, the abnormal behavior is plunking down $10k to play in an event you have close to a zero chance of winning and only a small chance of showing a profit from.
So why do we assume that there’s a “problem” when women don’t play? The men who play in these events are themselves huge statistical outliers, several standard deviations from the mean buy-in for tournament players. Maybe we should be questioning their behavior instead of wondering why more woman aren’t exhibiting such highly anamolous tendencies.
You are missing the very important fact that women are not excluded from the other events. Therefore, there is no segregation – only an additional event for those who otherwise do not feel welcome (and women, by and large, don’t feel welcome at the regular events because of the rampant sexism/mosogynism, as you’ve pointed out).
Given, then, that this is an ADDITIONAL event for women, it should be their choice whether to consider it derogatory to play in an event that excludes men (and therefore, not play) or whether to consider it a nice nod to the fact that women are 3% of the WSOP world and use it as a means to advertise the game to other women (or just to have fun in a more comfortable environment).
No one is saying there’s a “problem” if women don’t play. But women playing will increase the general player pool – end of story, if you are truly a poker player.
It’s one event. It’s there to reward the underrepresented, make them feel welcome, in the same way as a senior’s event or a casino employee’s event. All this talk about “harming women” etc is just poppycock.
Thanks for the thoughtful response, Linda. I was hoping you’d comment on this.
If the WSOP and/or the poker community decided that increasing (for example) African-American participation ought to be a goal, and that a special tournament only for African-American players could help with that goal, then I’d see no reason not to support that.
I think the point about providing an excuse to ignore misogyny is potentially a good one. I guess the (IMO ill-informed) backlash among male players against the Ladies’ Event may also contribute to this problem.
I agree that treating male behavior as the norm would be problematic, but I don’t think that’s what I’m doing here. As Noman (interesting pseudonym for this particular discussion) points out, the argument isn’t that playing bigger events is normal or that there’s something wrong with women who don’t- only that it would be beneficial to the game generally if more women did play. And I actually don’t even think getting more women into big buy-in events is essential. I just think encouraging women to step up their enthusiasm for poker, which generally happens for amateurs who take a shot at a WSOP event, could be good in a lot of ways.
It’s actually “Nomanr” 🙂 The “r” is important!
I do think that the fact that women are not barred from the open events is the most important fact here. It’s not segregation, it’s addition. Unless you truly want to make the argument that it’s discriminating against men to have this one event… to which I would say goodday to you since that is just a silly argument imo.
I enjoy The Poker Ethicist. Please continue the series.
On this issue, I liked and agreed with Andrew’s initial argument that ladies-only events are not discriminatory, as they are inclusive not exclusive. However, the remainder of the post attempted to justify these events as being well-intentioned. Here I disagree along similar lines as Lin Sherman.
Many institutions, groups, and governments have been trying to bring more women into engineering, science, and finance careers for a while, with little to show for the efforts. Perhaps women know best by joining these fields at a lower rate then men. Why presume they are wrong. Society is obligated to provide equal opportunity by sharing information and by removing any legal or other anti-social barriers to entry (those that favor one sex over the other). Then we let folks make their own decisions.
My poker experience is limited but useful in this case. I live in the bible-belt where poker, even home games, are illegal. When onine poker was pulled this year, I had very few options other than Pub-poker. At these events, which are quite popular where I live, the attendance is usually 20%-50% women by my estimation. Women attend these events regularly and do well. Of course pub-poker is free to play and the only thing at risk are “bar-cash”. I cannot confirm it but I understand a large percentage of the players on zynga and other facebook poker apps are women. I think it makes more sense that female attendance at prestigeous poker tournaments is based on their unwillingness to put a large percentage of their bankroll at risk, as opposed to fear of harrassment by men. This dynamic is well documented in the finance literature. Female traders are on average more risk averse than male traders.
If this is the case for poker, then a better way to attract more females to the major poker tournaments would be to subsidize them. I think the WSOP can legally offer discounts to a group that would be primarily or even exclusively women (think ladies night at a bar). Of course this would have a lot of men crying foul and offer up another opportunity for The Poker Ethicist to step in.
Fair points. I don’t really know a lot about how effective the Ladies’ Event actually is at drawing women into the game. The point I want to make primarily, and that it seems you agree with, is that there is no ethical problem with holding a tournament like this if the WSOP believes that it will be helpful in recruiting more female players.
I also think that while it would be good for poker to have more women more interested in the game, their underrepresentation isn’t a problem in any broader sense, ie this isn’t a major civil rights or gender equality issue or anything like that.
True Dat.
Good luck this week if you hit the main event.
Out of interest, has anyone ever gatecrashed the Seniors event?
My opinion, men playing in the ladies event are attention seeking, rather than on any moral crusade
Karl
The women’s poker event doesn’t bother me at all. I am just not sure where to draw the line.
I get a little annoyed about women’s only gyms (though I understand why women would want them) and I get even more annoyed that men pay for more auto-insurance even before they ever get in an accident or get a speeding ticket. It seems to me discrimination is okay as long as enough people for whatever say it is okay and that just doesn’t seem okay to me.
Okay….
It’s important to not throw the word “discrimination” around liberally when it doesn’t apply.
“Profiling” is not disciminatory unless it’s done with the intent of being discriminatory. This may be a fine line, and often abused, but it does exist. You (as a man, presumably) paying more for car insurance is the result of the insurance company doing some easy math on their historical results and categorizing you as higher risk due to your particular chromosome. This is not discrimination, it’s sound business practise. You just got unlucky (if you are a good driver) to be part of a general group that gets into accidents more often.
The same applied to profiling people for security purposes, but we don’t need to open that can of worms.
More importantly, to be discriminatory, there has to be an intent to deny something to a group based SOLELY on the fact that that group is what it is. In other words, I don’t let you work at my business because you are black. This is discrimination.
The female-only gyms are an interesting phenomenon, but I think some allowance does need to be made for the fact that men are different from women. Rooting out discrimination does not mean that we have to throw out common sense too and pretend there are no differences between the sexes, or whatever else.
I guess I’m agreeing with you actually. It’s hard to know where and how to draw the line!
What astonishes me is that for the auto-insurance thing not to be discrimination it means that the U.S. supreme court essentially has to say that biology is destiny…or in poker terms biology is a “weighted range” of behavior. It still isn’t clear to me why they are allowed to do that in this narrow area but almost no where else. To me the point is that the insurance companies shouldn’t be allowed to even group them (sexes)in the first place to see how many accidents they have compared to another group. Seriously could you imagine charging white people more for insurance then Asians(insert any particular group).
It’s not totally clear to me whether Foucault is claiming that the tournament is valuable merely as a means to the growth of poker or in some other, more intrinsic, way. It seems to me that he is or could be making both points. Surely, whether or not it conduces to women playing more, or more $10K’s, there’s something plausible about the thought that in a broad world championship festival, women ought to be able to play in an event where they stand a chance at not being systematically harassed and abused. And yes, I’d say the same about a tournament for African-Americans, if they were treated as badly in cardrooms as women are.
Well said. I was making the first point but I ought to have been making the second. Thanks fr making it for me.
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