Http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-blogs/55-michael-bernstein/entries/362873-vanessa-selbst-sucks-a-better-case-for-why-online-poker-should-be-legal

Thanks for sharing this-- sounds like a woman took him HU4Rollz and this was a tilt post.

Seriously though, while I haven't seen the now infamous Selbst 84o hand, to assume that it wasn't skill-oriented just because she got it in as a massive dog is crazy. There is so much mathematical analysis that goes into the 3-bet /4-bet/5-bet game that it is very possible that she had a profitable any-two raise against his range (if he was discarding enough) but in this case she ran into the part of his range that wouldn't fold.

Not saying I agree with the hand as I haven't seen it, but to treat any time you get it in behind as an unskilled failure is crazy and shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the game. Frankly it makes him seem like a weak reg that will dismiss any play just because it isn't standard ABC poker.

Part of the beauty of tournament poker is that you can win by getting lucky, which keeps the less-skilled opponents playing. However, this does not fully support the claim that poker is just luck, because it is possible for an unskilled investor to pour money into a business, do things wrong and yet still end up profiting. Luck may be less visible in other occupations besides poker, but it is always there.

His anti- Vanessa R stance comes off as crazy since he gives no info to back up his implication that she is not a good player, and makes me wonder if he is de-valuing her play just because she is an attractive woman and mainstream.

Vanessa Ruosso is attractive?

ETA...ok I will comment on the actual subject of this thread. I like the article actually. If you take away the fact that he is speaking of Vanessa Selbst and replace it with a male luckbox, you might be able to see his point.


Not exactly on topic but.....
I witnessed a horrendous hand yesterday that she played in the main event. 4 bet shoving cold with J2. Quality play.

His point is impossible to see imo, because to arrive at a point with any merit whatsoever you have to give sound reasoning and arrive there with logic and facts. Instead he names a single hand (without any of the action or relevant details) and acts like the results from that alone prove she isn't a skilled player.

My criticism has nothing to do with Vanessa being a woman-- I am not even defending her play, since I would need (gasp-- facts) to analyze the hand fairly. The point is that singling out one potentially results oriented hand is not enough to rule someone as an unskilled player.

Boy doesn't like bad beats. :/

I'm not going to put the HH up, just bc it's impossible to tell if it was good/bad without knowing anything about gameflow at the time.
I'm not even sure how to read his post, it just seems like it wasn't planned well enough for his point to overcome the overall nasty tone of the article.

Picking on VR was very strange, there are much much bigger luckboxes.

She explains the hand here, she even says she might have had a misstep, but her read was correct:
http://www.pokernews.com/video/napt-...0244510001.htm

I think his complaints are very typical of people that don't understand fold equity in high pressure situations, polarizing ranges and simple pot odds.
If i had a nickel, everytime somebody told me "how can you call with that? How can you raise with that? Keep doing that girl, you'll lose eventually!" I'd be pretty rich. Yes, his article would be pretty dumb even if he was talking about a male lag player.

Hachem got the same amount of heat, when he said similar things in the 2009 ME, he simply didn't understand and was complaining kids "not respecting the game" about people around him being too aggro. That also sounded pretty pathetic.

At a certain point your hands matter very little, it's your opponent's range and his perceived range of you. A lot, if not all of your profit will come from that.

Great post, bellatrix.

It makes me laugh when people defend bad play by using this whole, "I play on a higher level than you" baloney.
Cold 4 bet shoving with J2 is never a good play. Ever

He lost me at "without further adieu" and "could care less."

Anybody know what the original photo was?

+1

HU4rollz? (j/k, ofc)
Note: I play a lot of HUHU LHE - where if you play with a VPIP of <50 you are a bonafide fish!

The article is sooo incredibly dumb and it does seem particularly tone deaf for an editor to post it on a day when Vanessa is chip leader at a tourney she won last year (unless deliberately provoking controversy). Vanessa Selbst is one of the best advocates for poker as a skill game, due to her incredibly articulate explanation of hands (and willingness to reveal that thought process) and her work ethic.

FWIW, in his comparison of chess and poker, he further reveals his inadequacy as a writer/thinker.

The editor is neither responsible for when it comes out nor the content.

I'm also a blogger at cardplayer and I'm considering moving my blog in protest if this tool doesn't leave.

Nothing is absolute in poker.

The great thing about poker is that it's not like chess. Nothing is concrete. Sure there's an optimal way of playing, yada yada yada, but the creativity of poker allows you to experiment depending on so many factors, one of the most important things being game flow. The people who go above and beyond in creativity and experiment with unorthodox plays can be deemed as genius or called terrible players. Guess it's sort of a fine line with that one, but poker is constantly changing and evolving.

Ummmmm.... no

"As good poker players (or good poker students, as it really doesn’t matter what level you are on for the sake of this argument), we all know that poker is (or should be) governed by mathematical outcomes that are predictable to the extent that we believe them to be true over a long enough sampling when measured by standard deviation"

I skimmed most of the blog- was there any facts behind his blathering, or was he just yapping?

Blogs don't have editors.

You're looking at a player who has a total of $300,000 in live winnings since 2005 and is ranked 3500th in Bluff Magazine's power ratings. In a world where being outrageous is considered of greater worth than actual achievement, it should be no surprise that such an individual can get his blog on Cardplayer. He has succeeded well with this effort to get noticed and I expect that he'll be encouraged to continue to get his blog read further.

The only remedy is to ignore his blog and encourage others not to read it.

I understand your point, Venice, and to some degree I do agree with you. But if I had to take a line against an idiot, I'd rather take the proactive one and call him out on his stupid article. Ignoring it is second best imo just because I think collective silence can be interpreted as people accepting what he writes and believing any of the bs.

Just to clarify, I'm not defending VS's play...people who are 4-betting her consider the very high possibility that they're getting 5-bet shoved on so I don't know how long she can continue to 5-bet shove garbage.

lol i don't know who you are but why the F do you feel the need to insult me in every post you make? be MORE bitter, please. it's pathetic.

and also don't make up hands, as this obviously wasn't a cold 4 bet shove, it was a cold 4bet for 1/4 my chips and it worked perfectly. i seriously have no idea why you're so rude or bitter, but get over yourself. i get this from the guys all the time, i would expect more from someone in this forum.

Try not to take it so hard. For every person who is criticising a play you made, there are 10 people who are giving you praise. It seems like there's a lot of bad involved with being well-known (having hands that you might not be proud of thrown in your face, or worse, having hands that you played well questioned by people who don't get it), but there's sooooo much upside to your position that I hope you realize it and don't let petty comments (or a moronic cardplayer blog) make you lose sight of that.

Thanks Jamie Yeah I've definitely learned to roll with the moronic comments and this blog post actually amused me. And the comments below were inspiring to me.

I just think it's pretty pathetic when the same 3 or 4 people make it their life goal to post negative things (and blatant lies) about me all the time. It's also just weird. you're right, I should learn to ignore it better though. Anyway, I'm off to bed to try to go luckbox another tournament tomorrow!

There is just no way anyone can ever say that something is absolutely never good or never bad in this game of ours that evolves on a daily basis almost.
So much of these plays that we hear about have to do with so much more than the fact that she has J2 in her hand. These high stakes live regs who play the circuits and all the main events have so much history together and are obviously very good at understanding and interpreting game flow and using it to the best of their advantage. We have no idea what was going on at that table at the time and we have no idea of the history between the players, at this current tournament and in past events.
This is not to say that talented, winning players don't make mistakes or spaz once in a while. It just means we don't have all the facts and we don't have the experience or information that she does when she decides to 4bet with J2.

And as HighlandFox would say, at least she did have jack high

GOOD LUCK tomorrow !!

You have the skill already, i'll try to send some cards your way too...

Dear jpsychlady:

I'm a guy, so I'll answer your question from a man's perspective. Is Vanessa Ruosso attractive? What's the time worn bromide? "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." I have a good poker buddy who is "supposedly" happily married. When "Joe" found out that Vanessa was getting married to Chad Brown, he was beside himself. He couldn't believe that Vanessa had fallen for a guy like Chad. I tried to console him and calm him down (and remind him that he was married to a very fine lady), but Joe just could not get over "losing" Vanessa Rousso. So "yes," I guess Vanessa is attractive - at least to Chad and my poker buddy Joe. (Chad doesn't have anything to worry about ... Joe is in his 70's.)

Get well soon Chad!

Former DJ

JamieAnn:

Very strange for MJ to unload on Vanessa Selbst that way trying to denigrate her play as that of a "luck box." There were some players who might have thought (or even said) the same thing about the late Stu Ungar.

MJ's argument against Vanessa Selbst is invalidated by the empirical evidence. Vanessa is winning too many large buy-in, large-field, major high profile tournaments (against strong competition) for this to be luck. (If a man were doing exactly the same thing, would MJ be castigating his play? Somehow I doubt it. If anything, MJ would probably be blogging about how great the guy's "aggressive play" is.)

OK, I have a new dream. I hope Vanessa and MJ make it to the final table of the WSOP Main Event and it gets down to heads up between them. It will be a pleasure watching Vanessa crush him.

Former DJ