ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — In the glitzy, high-stakes world of tournament poker, there are some unwritten rules among gamblers.
One of them is: Don't enter tournaments where you may not be an appropriate player.
So when Nicole Rowe, physically exhausted and emotionally battered from a recent struggle with breast cancer, drove here last weekend to enter a ladies' no-limit Texas Hold 'Em tournament, she was surprised to see Abraham Korotki in the field.
For Rowe, 40, of West Windsor, N.Y., the prize money was just one reason to make the trip to the Borgata. She also looked forward to bonding with other women and telling them about the importance of early detection of the disease.
Rowe, who is scheduled to undergo a double mastectomy at the end of the month, urges women to get a sonogram in addition to an annual mammogram.
Two years ago, before being diagnosed with breast cancer, Rowe, a veteran gambler who plays poker about three times a week, came in second in the Borgata tournament. This time, she was determined to win it.
But Korotki, a 63-year-old semiretired real estate developer from Ventnor, N.J., took home the top prize of nearly $21,000 last Saturday, and a trophy. In a field of 260 players, each of whom had put up $300, Rowe came in second, winning just under $12,000 after taxes.
Korotki said he thought he saw other men signing up for the women's-only tournament and, besides, he wanted more practice time to get ready for when the World Poker Tour (WPT) rolled into town this week. That event attracts hundreds of top gamblers from around the globe, who come to participate in more than 40 WPT-sanctioned tournaments in Atlantic City casinos through Thursday.
"I didn't do this for the money," Korotki said. "I'm preparing to go into a main event this week, and I needed some practice time. I hadn't played in tournaments in a while."
Korotki, who doesn't describe himself as a professional poker player, has pocketed more than $650,000 in poker-tournament winnings in his lifetime, including a gold ring in a World Series of Poker event here.
Rowe said she took Korotki's presence in the tournament in stride, and even struck up a kind of friendship with him. But other women who had been seated with him as the competition became narrower and narrower over a 14-hour period left the casino angry, feeling a man had muscled his way into a place he did not belong.
Rowe uses the gambling term "side pot" to describe Korotki as a blessing in disguise. The flap brought by the incident — from mainstream media down to poker Web sites and blogs — has garnered more attention for Rowe's breast-cancer awareness crusade.
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