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He’s a professional online poker player and has earned a World Series of Poker bracelet, but but his greatest achievement may have happened earlier this week when Jason Somerville came out of the closet, making him perhaps the only openly gay male poker pro. In a blog post on the Bad Beats Crew site, Somerville wrote at length about the experience and decision.

“One of the things that I think is universally liked about poker is that the game is open to anyone. If you’ve got the cash, we’ve got a seat open. It doesn’t matter if you’re white, black, Christian, Jewish, a woman, physically disabled, a foreigner, a felon, or smell terrible, we’ll make room for you at the not-necessarily-proverbial table and let you play,” he wrote before pouting out that outside of Vanessa Selbst, he’s never met a single gay professional poker player.

Somerville didn’t even come out to his friends until he was 22 and hadn’t made a gay friend until he was 24, in June of last year. He found that this helped him come to his decision to come out and helped him frame and understand his hesitancy to be himself.

“I feared that I’d lose friendships that meant a lot to me, that I’d ring a bell that could never be unrung and I’d be miserable, somehow. It took me a long time to mostly get over all those somewhat irrational anxieties (fingers crossed!) and to truly start being myself, regardless of what that might mean or look like to others.”

Of course, Jason needn’t have worried too much: he’s already received an outpouring of support on Twitter, the TwoPlusTwo forums and even Youtube, with close friend Daniel Negreanu posting a video supporting his decision.

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