Record Turnout, Ugly Backlash at WSOP Ladies Week
A dispatch from the first leg of my Las Vegas trip
Hello from Las Vegas!
I began my annual summer voyage with Ladies Week, a now booming series of events, including high rollers, meet-up games and the World Series of Poker Ladies Event, which saw its largest turnout ever this year. I’ve been playing in it so long, my hair wasn’t even red when I started.
I cashed in my third straight Ladies Event, and sixth overall, but was unable to get super deep. An unsuccessful bluff followed by two lost coin-flips eliminated me in 98th out of nearly 1500 players.
The tournament made waves when Aubrey Williams, a transgender woman and popular professional player, got super deep, ultimately finishing in 2nd place for a career best of over $129,000. While her peers cheered her on, transphobic comments from the usual suspects (such as Libs of TikTok) rained on the parade.
I was impressed by the outpouring of support for Aubrey from many influential poker pros and groups, of all genders. To name just a few: high stakes pro Patrick Leonard, fourth place Ladies Event finisher Caitlin Comeskey, Linda “First Lady of Poker” Johnson, the Pocket Queens women’s collective, and commentator and steadfast ally Joe Stapleton. My friend Jen Newell also wrote a nice wrap-up on this platform.
Aubrey got a lot of support from her peers, though it would be an exaggeration to say it was universal. I heard plenty of nasty comments from some players (mostly men), misgendering Aubrey and showcasing the way that misogyny shapeshifts to transphobia. This sort of gender essentialism and its discontents was a major topic of a conversation I just had with Princeton professor Agustín Fuentes, author of the fantastic book, Sex is a Spectrum.
The harassment toward Aubrey was mostly from online commenters, trolls and bots, and not from institutions. It is not contested that she is allowed to play in the Ladies Event of the World Series of Poker. Not so in chess. In 2023, the international chess organization, FIDE, announced restrictions for transgender players. Widely misreported as a ban, the policy was still ridiculous. FIDE essentially asserted that they could over-rule national chess organizations, many of which have inclusive transgender policies, such as the USA, France, Germany and the UK.
This caused worldwide press coverage, much of it critical. I appeared on CNN and wrote an op-ed for NBC at the time, to criticize the policies. Prominent transgender player Yosha Iglesias, now women’s champion of France, was featured in numerous venues, and her French teammates supported her. Unfortunately, FIDE did not back down. I would have loved to see even more of the top players in the world, along with their organizations, speak out in favor of trans rights in chess, as they did in poker. It is never too late!
The transphobic ragebait sadly distracted from the interesting Ladies WSOP final table play, which included a brave bluff by Aubrey, and an astounding call by the eventual winner, Skye Chen. That key moment starts at around 14:00 in the video below.
Chen was a surprise winner, playing in her second WSOP event. No poker grinder, she was also in Las Vegas to play mahjong. She told poker.org that live poker appeals to her partly because it reminds her of a “social deduction game, like Werewolf or Mafia.” Skye’s comments and trajectory remind me of David Epstein’s book Range, which argues that learning different subjects or sports, even if shallowly, can help you master and understand your main pursuit better. I consider this a form of Thinking Sideways, and am exploring new games for this reason, including mahjong, which I learned from a mom at my son’s school, an officer at the Philly “Mah-Jawn” club.
While in Las Vegas, I did a few interviews on this overlap between games and smart thinking. Like this one for the Morning Blend, where I spoke about making decisions under pressure and uncertainty.
Rocking the rainbow board of course, because even though Pride month is over, human rights are always game theory optimal.
Next up? The Main Event1! Follow along on my instagram and X profiles for updates2.
Also keep an eye on Sam Greenwood’s Punt of the Main Event, though hopefully if I appear there, it’s because I’m either super deep, or catching a punt!
Update: I bagged a slightly above average stack for Day two, which begins on Tuesday!
Thank you for commenting on this important social issue that is - unfortunately- divisive in our (poker) world.
It is the respected voices of this world - like yours - that sway the public facing opinion of an industry and culture.
It is well known that the culture of American poker is, to put it kindly, rough around the edges.
It is voices such as yours and others you mentioned that keep it from looking like a band of caged animals destined to be on the visionarily and empathetically bankrupt side of history.
Thank you Jen.
How exciting! And how predictably awful that the only time some folks rally for women's rights is when it is so obviously ingenuine.
Congratulations on your very respectable finish. Next year, I am determined to make this event.