The latest “Florida Man” story to pop up in the news comes with a number of twists. Typically, any story with that tag involves someone doing something incredibly stupid and either getting arrested or seriously injuring themself. But Dave Hughs didn’t do either of those things. While visiting the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida, Dave wound up winning the “Ladies No-Limit Hold’em” poker tournament. But Mr. Hughs is not a transgender woman. He’s just a guy who likes to play poker. In fact, he’s “100% against” men competing in women’s sports. (The Blaze)

A man won a women’s poker tournament in Florida but says he is “100% against” men participating in women’s sports.

Dave Hughes, who won the “Ladies No-Limit Hold’em” event at the Seminole Hard Rock in Florida, said he drove over five hours to visit a friend competing in a $7 million poker event at the casino on April 29, 2023, TimCast reported…

“I figured why not, the ladies, as you know, are just as fierce, capable, and competitive as the men in poker and smell a lot better as well,” Hughes told Timcast News.

Before we begin criticizing Dave Hughs for infringing on women’s sports, there are a few details to take into consideration. First of all, he didn’t set out to win a women’s tournament. He was in town visiting a friend and they went to the casino. Dave wanted to enter a poker tournament, but the ladies’ tournament was the only one with open seats so he signed up.

It turns out that Florida law prevents the casino’s management from blocking a man from competing in a contest intended for women. It doesn’t sound like the female competitors were too upset over it either. A number of them began putting up “bounties” on Dave, offering extra shares of the prize money to whoever knocked him out of contention, but it was reportedly done in a friendly, joking fashion.

Also, the primary complaint most of us have with trans athletes competing against women is that they have an inherent biological advantage in competitive sports. That’s a physical advantage. Poker is not a physical game. It’s a mental competition with a significant amount of luck involved.

I have no problem with tournaments involving games of chance or mental prowess being reserved for women if that’s what a casino wishes to do. Many ladies might be more comfortable in such a single-sex environment. But claiming that they need that environment would be like barring men from a women’s chess tournament. There would be an unspoken assumption that women aren’t smart enough to compete against men, which is frankly just insulting. (Of course, that still doesn’t explain why a woman has never won the World Chess Championship and why they hold a separate championship just for women. Judit Polgar came the closest, finishing in the top ten one year.)

Of course, once this story spreads a bit more widely, you know what’s going to happen. Some trans poker player will start showing up at women’s tournaments just to make a point. The “bounties” on that person should be hilarious.