Bencb Blew Up Twitter: Misogyny, Ignorance or Misunderstanding? 

At the end of June 2024, the poker part of X (ex-Twitter) became highly agitated about the old (but not gold) topic of “men in poker having biological advantages over women”. The topic was indirectly brought about by Benjamin “bencb789” Rolle.

I followed along for two straight days and found myself (a female poker player and journalist) absolutely fascinated by the reactions. In this PokerListings article, I’ve provided a look through at how exactly the conversation unfolded.

Note: All quotes in this article have been taken directly from the source as links, screenshots or classic quoting. I recommend you read them, keeping in mind that people tend to generalize, rephrase and exaggerate others’ words, leading to new meanings. I have excluded comments unrelated to the topic, especially those having to do with insults and personal attacks.

How Did Ben Rolle Stir Up The Community?

On June 23rd, a poker player from the JakaCoaching Team, Blaise Bourgeois shared a screenshot on X of a recent bencb’s Q&A on Instagram:

Blaise added to his reaction to the screenshot:

https://x.com/BlaiseBourgeois/status/1804646843596636504

His tweet instantly attracted a load of attention, mostly due to both his and Rolle’s phrasing.

It’s safe to say that the comment section went wild. People have been sharing their anger, dejection, confusion, and at times even support for Rolle for almost 12 hours, until he published a very long follow-up, starting with “I really don’t care. I can take the heat.”:

Unfortunately for Ben, this long read wasn’t all that helpful. It’s safe to say — it only added fuel to the fire.

Reactions from Female Poker Players

An abundance of well-known female poker players alongside other women in poker were not thrilled with Ben’s opinion, mainly for two reasons:

1. Initial Q&A — one of the main reasons men have an advantage over women in poker is higher competitiveness;
2. From the follow-up — “men are LESS emotional than women” and men “can defend ourselves better, verbally and physically (hello, biology)” (direct quotes).

I have selected a few notable comments on the topic.

Twice US women’s chess champion and PokerStars Team Pro Jennifer Shahade responded to one of the questions that Ben wrote in his Q&A, specifically “Why are there  barely any women in the top 100 poker earner’s list?”:

“Background: Men have more wealth, higher wages, more access to capital, a super large % of crypto. They create study groups/cliques with no or few women. Women otoh have more childcare/eldercare, emotional labor, are often harassed and told they’re biologically inferior. Answer: feminists are angry, math hard. competition word salad.”

She recommends coaches “educate themselves and avoid discouraging and poorly formed points”. Since in the follow-up Ben referenced chess, Jennifer shared a link to a study that she co-authored “Checking Gender Bias: Parents and Mentors Perceive Less Chess Potential in Girls”.

She also explained why, in her opinion, the top players in skill based games, such as e-sports and chess, have historically been and are still mostly all men:

“Surely a combo of factors, like harassment, male gaze, more social obligations of women, less socially acceptable for them to be aggressive and obsessive. I wouldn’t rule out some inherent reasons, but these are hard to eyeball and  rampant speculation and exaggeration of such factors perpetuates negativity toward women.

And maybe women have some inherent advantages too (in poker this seems particularly plausible)! People don’t discuss this much because they are trying to work backwards from the status quo rather than imagine what’s possible! There’s a great book by Angela Saini about this.”

Poker player Kristy Arnett Moreno pointed out that she agreed with the point that men and women differ, as well as that historically men have advantage. However, she disagreed with Ben’s reasoning behind it. Moreno was especially focused on his nuanced follow-up and presented arguments for her point of view:

The winner of $1.7K WSOPC Commerce Casino Main Event Jessica Vierling asked Ben to share sources of his facts, while explaining a few reasons behind the inequality in business and poker today:

Science writer and author of the poker best seller “The Truth Detective: A Poker Player’s Guide to a Complex World” Alex O’Brien commented to Ben’s follow-up and offered him a chance to chat in person in online or live meeting to “help elevate” his opinion “to an informed one”:

Rolle, who didn’t know who Alex is, answered quite peculiarly:

By the way, there are links shared by Alex O’Brien:

• Her book “The Truth Detective: A Poker Player’s Guide to a Complex World” on Amazon
• A study “Who Wants to Lead? Anticipated Gender Discrimination Reduces Women’s Leadership Ambitions”

High stakes poker player Victoria Livschitz also gave Ben an invitation to chat, but in a form of debate with a neutral moderator and a reframed topic. It would no longer be“Men have an advantage due to a higher competitive drive” to “Why we don’t see enough women in top poker, what could be the drivers”.

However, the two couldn’t agree on the terms since Ben wanted to organize the event on his own channel and lead the conversation.

Reactions from Male Poker Players

Women weren’t the only ones confused and unhappy with Ben’s takes. The male part of the poker community weighed in as well.

Co-host of the LA Poker Roundup, Derek Kwan wrote:

https://x.com/kwansfull/status/1804943671105925569

888poker team member, Ian Simpson assumed that Rolle is driven by sexism and strongly disapproved of his opinions from both initial Q&A and the follow-up:

“Your sexism is bleeding through in this post. Deny it all you want, that is what it is. Using “buzzwords” doesn’t invalidate people’s counter arguments. By the way, men are victims of insults and racism in gaming too. Again, we can suck it up better. I doubt you have experienced nearly as much of the shit women with a similar reach encounter on social media. You have no idea how much they have had to “suck it up. 

People replying to you disagreeing isn’t engagement farming (necessarily) the same could have been said for your opening post. People genuinely think your take is garbage and want to challenge it, so that people can see what a bad take it is. 

You are correct that there are differences between men and women, and that these should be celebrated. But many of the differences are societal and not biological. Things like that can be changed, but your message here is in hinderance to that change, not for it.”

Justin Bonomo focused on the harassment in chess part of Ben’s follow-up, reminding people that Jennifer Shahade left the US Chess Women’s Program as a response to prolonged and ignored harassment of girls and women in US Chess:

“There’s a lot to be enraged about in this wall of drivel, but the part that gets me the most is the combination of ignorance and hubris. Disagreeing with experts on points that he is obviously wildly uneducated about.

Among a litany of other gross falsities, he implies that women in chess don’t face any harassment  Have you ever even heard of @JenShahade? Jesus dude, read a fucking book for once in your life before spouting off with this nonsense.”

Max Silver wrote a humorous thread with a single tweet to highlight the strangest part of this discussion:

https://x.com/max_silver/status/1805223009860337820

Patrick Leonard shared interesting personal experience that also contradicted Ben’s points:

“My best student over the last 3 years has been female. I’ve also only took on one female 😂 she now coaches the guys and will be leading bitB Ladies after the summer 🐐 a lot of women who crush online just don’t like to share their names from what I’ve seen.”

Finally, the poker legend Phil Hellmuth found time in his race for another record WSOP bracelet to suggest an interesting experiment:

However, a few poker pros opted to publicly support Ben. For example, Charlie Carrel tried to approach this in a diplomatic way, stating:

“You’re right, Ben. And for the record, if I listed the most intelligent people I’ve ever met, more would be women than men. But the idea that men don’t have advantages over women, on average, in poker, is wrong.”

But when Shelby Wells pointed that “men absolutely have an advantage over women in poker – the difference is this post seems to argue it’s based in biology & i would argue it’s based in socialization”, Charlie supported this too:

“It’s a fair argument, although I would lean towards it being both. Although I would guess it is much more socialisation than people think, there are biological factors that are unavoidable. At the very least, there is one week out of the month that my female students sometimes have to just not play. In my opinion, it makes it even more impressive when women annihilate in poker and chess.”

Why Is This Discussion So Hot?

First of all — it’s important to note that Ben wasn’t the person who published the post as a debatable topic. He answered a question on Instagram where it was meant to disappear without a trace.

The discussion was started without his active participation. People reacted to his words on Instagram and others’ comments on X, but weren’t discussing it with him for over half a day.

I think that people in general (excluding aggressive ones and attention seekers) reacted to the initial post because of two main reasons:

1. Word choice — when a respected member of the poker community shares his opinion publicly using words like “Karen’s”, “snowflakes” and “delusional” and “angry feminist” — this labelling reads as disrespectful and belittling.
2. Lack of proof — despite his claim that “men are simply more competitive” Ben never actually refers to any scientific sources.

The second reason leads straight to his follow-up, which is even more problematic. I’m not going to do a sentence-by-sentence analysis, but instead I’ll try to give a general overview on the weak and baiting parts of his post .

For instance, he started a detailed explanation of his opinion with the sentence below: 

“I will share my opinion even if it upsets people because they cannot handle reality”.

It reads like his opinion is the opinion, while others’ are not.

He continues by commenting on entry barriers for women, while clearly not being a woman and lacking the female experience.

Women retweeted his initial post to explain these barriers in detail but it seems that Ben didn’t see them. Otherwise, why would he almost completely devalue the seriousness of these barriers? He even portrayed men as having advantages there too because they “also experience mistreatment, are insulted, and victims of racism”, but could “care less”.

Moreover, he stated “But men are LESS emotional than women. And this is an advantage in poker. Also, we can defend ourselves better, verbally and physically (hello, biology)..”

I’ll reiterate: all of the statements made by Rolle are not reinforce with any proof. You cannot (and will do) find even a single link or reference from him to a study, research paper, survey or anything of the like.

Unsurprisingly, with this kind of attitude and lack of factuality on a controversial topic, Ben couldn’t avoid people’s frustration. Who knows, maybe he will use this as a learning opportunity to broaden his horizons and help other people to do the same.

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