Men in Women's only poker event at IP (2 of 5).

Part two of Five...

However, if there were all these newcomers in the Texas Holdem poker, those “scared” little lilies weren’t the ones clamoring for the ouster of Kai and Monkey. The new players that the TDs don’t want to scare off because they are there to learn poker were actually in favor of the antics, I’m told, but it was other females that weren’t.

Here are some of their possible rationales (ladies, this is just silly male speculation please have a sense of humor when necessary and forgive me my handicap of being male):

-They don’t like Monkey and/or Kai.

How can you not like Kai? … … … Just kidding Monk. Poker players are people and people are petty. Get on the bad side of one and they’ll look to make your life uncomfortable and unbearable. They’ll scream about banning you and all the important people they know… and sometimes they do know somebody. The little spats at even a 3-6 limit game can be over mindnumbingly meaningless things. In Atlantic City people will get stabbed for smaller offenses then you’d see in the playground of a schoolyard. So it’s possible there were a few women with a personal axe to grind with either of those two.

-They felt men in drag was making a mockery of their event.

Okay, I can buy this a little bit. But again even as I accept that viewpoint it’s kind of hollow. If women dress like men are they making a mockery of men? Don’t half the female players wear the same uniforma as a male player? Hoodie, shorts (jean shorts maybe), and sneakers? Are cross-dressers making a mockery of women? If Monkey and Kai were going to over-act in bad female stereotypes maybe this has some credence, but I think not.

-They were scared of the big bad men.

I’ll probably be savaged for implying the women’s field is softer and some of the participants have very thin skins when it comes to the stigma that female players save a smaller elite like Vanessa Selbst, Vanessa Rousso, and Jennifer Harman are inferior to male players (btw, they have thin skins because they are petty poker players not because they are women, the only generalization I’d make about women’s skin is it is generally softer--like their poker tournaments).

Course you could argue if the opposite was true, if women were the superior players, we’d have men’s only events and we don’t. But I’m mostly joking, I don’t think any of the women that complained would have any fear sitting down with Monkey or Kai in a standard tournament, or maybe better said, any more fear than a man would.

-They are not charitable.

For the most part I don’t buy this. To them the charity aspect of it was secondary… in a sense. Also, they could believe that “giving to charity” was just a cover story. I know Monkey and Kai well enough to know it wasn’t, but strangers might not believe it. Had they come with a representative for Breast Cancer they’d have more credibility but really who’s going to do that, and the charity aspect was for the women probably a nonissue.

-They didn’t want two of the best players on the Coast competing against them.

Ding, ding, ding. Certainly, this had to steer their opinion. Not that they are scared per se, of Monkey or Kai, but if you are running a race with a cash prize do you really want Carl Lewis in the blocks next to you, of course not, nor do you want somebody you consider you equal when you could win almost as much with them not there.

To be continued...