A 70-year-old Florida man received a poker occasion over the weekend that was alleged to be reserved for ladies.
Poker aficionado David Hughes is a person who nonetheless managed to win a women’ poker occasion. Hughes’ first-place end on the $250 Girls No-Restrict Maintain’em Deep Stack on the Seminole Exhausting Rock Poker Showdown received him $5,555. (Picture: Twitter)
David Hughes of Deltona, Fla., took benefit of a little-known state legislation that bars casinos and card golf equipment from stopping males from getting into poker tournaments marketed as women’ occasions. Hughes determined to take part within the $250 Girls No-Restrict Maintain’em Deep Stack occasion on Saturday on the Seminole Exhausting Rock Resort & On line casino in Hollywood. The resort was internet hosting its annual Seminole Exhausting Rock Poker Showdown.
After busting two instances, Hughes purchased in for a 3rd time. It turned out to be a successful wager, as he ultimately outlasted the 80 different entries to assert the occasion’s high prize of $5,555.
Florida’s anti-discrimination legal guidelines mandate that gaming institutions not separate occasions by gender, race, faith, nationwide origin, or familial standing. Nevertheless, Hughes’ participation stirred a lot controversy within the Seminole poker site on Saturday night time.
Poker professional Ebony Kenney, who herself was taking part in within the match, positioned a $300 bounty on Hughes to entice gamers to focus on his pots. However the bounty maybe helped Hughes, as others performed aggressively towards the poker newbie who has performed stay tournaments for years.
Hughes Outlasts the Girls
A lot of his feminine rivals didn’t take too kindly to Hughes’ participation. Together with Keeney issuing a $300 bounty, gamers scolded Hughes on the felt and recurrently made gestures towards him, equivalent to a thumbs down directed his manner.
Kenney tweeted that Hughes, at one level, responded to his feminine critics, saying he “may fake to establish as a girl as a result of they permit something as of late.”
Hughes has cashed out 38 different instances over the previous decade, in response to The Hendon Mob, a web-based poker database that tracks match outcomes.
Hughes’ finest end result was a third-place end on the 2021 Nice American Poker Event’s $100,000 Summer time Occasion on the Daytona Seaside Racing & Card Membership, successful $17,080. He additionally received $11,565 after putting second at a 2022 Winter Collection Open occasion in Jacksonville.
Most of Hughes’ different money wins have been small payouts of lower than $1,000. His $5,555 victory on the women’ occasion marked his third-best stay money efficiency.
Nationwide Concern
Hughes’ poker win is simply the newest controversy within the ongoing debate about transgender individuals collaborating in sports activities and/or competitions with genders that they won’t have been aligned with at beginning.
Aggressive sports activities have lengthy been sex-segregated. Supporters of such segregation say organic variations between women and men could make competitions unfair ought to an individual born as a male later establish as a feminine and search to take part in ladies’s sports activities.
Florida lawmakers and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in 2021 banned transgender females from collaborating in public faculty groups supposed just for student-athletes born feminine.
“In Florida, ladies are going to play ladies’ sports activities and boys are going to play boys’ sports activities,” DeSantis stated after signing the invoice.
The general public education athletics legislation doesn’t cowl poker occasions. That’s as a result of Florida doesn’t think about the on line casino sport a sport. As such, companies internet hosting such poker video games can’t discriminate based mostly on gender.
