I watched on TV last night and I had a simple reaction: What was that?

First, how did the players get to the final table, which was the only table? I didn't hear anything about prior eliminations, so I guess it was an STT. But how were the players chosen?

Obviously Vanessa Rousso belonged there. I have great respect for her and what she has accomplished. I even named one of our cats Vanessa Rousso when she was named the 2+2 Pokercast Player of the Year. (If we get a male cat, my wife says that we have to name it Doyle.)

Another player got in through a satellite. OK, that accounts for two players, what about the rest? One of the players was "local." Is that how she got her seat, by being acknowledged as the best player in the neighborhood?

With most of the other players, it was mentioned how long they had been playing, for example, This is x and she has been playing for 10 years. If longevity was the criterian, why wasn't Jennifer Harman or Linda Johnson playing?

I know that some women don't like to play female only tournaments. Perhaps that explains the women that weren't at the table. I would guess that if I checked The Hendon Mob or another ranking site, that a whole bunch of deserving female players weren't at the table.

I get that is was a charity tournament, that makes sense. But charity tournaments with men usually aren't six players sitting at a table, and they didn't have the usual summary about how and when players were eliminated.

So it's not a real WPT tournament. But wait, it must be a real tournament, because winning gets you a buy-in for the Tournament of Champions. So there is a prize pool for the winners, right? No, I didn't hear anything about that either.

I don't get it. If you want to have a ladies night charity tournament, why not do it right and invite the top 100 female players, using rankings and/or importance to poker (Linda Johnson would be a automatic invite) and some female celebrities and CEOs to play, and do it right?

What am I missing? In my opinion, whatever that was gave the impression that you couldn't have a real tournament just for women--an impression that I'm sure most of you ladies don't want.

Rousso won a WPT World Champiopnship seat plus a percentage of the $25,000 prize pool Linda Johnson and Jen Harman have appeared on Ladies' Night events in the past, and to my knowledge a non-winner has never made a repeat appearance.

Kimberly Lansing likely got her seat since she was the previous anchor on the WPT broadcasts.

I've always thought the format was a bit weird; 5 invited names and one sattelite winner (my friend London won the sat a few years ago).

I'd like to see something more like Shooting Stars. Invite some name female pros, sprinkle them at different tables in a shoutout format. Whoever wins their table moves on.

It would give a lot of women who don't get to play with the pros some experience playing with them, and probably being in an even bigger crowd. I think it would be good for women's poker.

I haven't expressed this to any of the WPT folks, maybe someone should bounce it off them.

Shauna.

That was the worst poker I have ever seen! Cannot believe it was Televised!!



Final Hand was the best, Call All in with K4 Off....yeah......

If you watched five minutes of that you could tell it was the worst poker ever televised. Rousso probably could've won that "tournament" in about a half hour if it wasn't a televised event. I think it was a charity event, where any winnings went to a charity of their choice and first place went to the tournament of champions.