A bit of bizarre poker news has trickled out of Atlantic City, where a male, 65 year-old Abraham Korotki, was not only allowed to play in Woman’s only poker tournament, but managed to win the thing! Korotki paid the $300 entrant’s fee and was never informed he was ineligible by tournament officials.

Korotki defied the odds by beating a field of over 260 women to win the $21,000 in prize-money; much to the dismay of the other entrants.

In a completely gender-equal competition like poker it’s hard to claim Korotki had any unfair advantage, and doing so would be a setback to female poker players everywhere. The idea of woman’s only poker tournaments has survived mostly on tradition, than on any competitive disadvantage they may have.

Additionally, woman’s only events provide tentative first-time female players an avenue to give the game a shot, without the fear of having to deal with a male-dominated activity as an outsider, and therefore do a wonderful job of bringing new players into the game, and increasing the ranks of female poker players.

So it would seem the Korotki story is really nothing more than a comical gaffe by the tournament directors. I wonder if he was thinking, “Boy, there sure are a lot of women in this tournament.”

Tags: atlantic city, ladies tournament, poker tournament

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 at 11:08 am and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Man wins ladies-only poker tournament in Atlantic City”

1. Bill Bruce says:

   September 16, 2009 at 12:50 pm

   I doubt if it was a “commical gaffe by the tournament directors” More likely there were legal issues involved in denying him entry.