Vanessa Selbst Critic Draws Ridicule From Poker Fans

Vanessa Selbst has just won the NAPT Mohegan Sun Main Event for the second year in a row and now lies in second spot on the ‘Woman’s All Time Money List,’ with $4,562,979 in live tournament winnings.
On the other hand, Michael Bernstein has made $318,652 from live tournaments since 2001, which might just account for the scathing write-up Bernstein gave Selbst recently on his Cardplayer blog post.
Amazingly, the self-proclaimed poker expert is described under his Cardplayer blog as having ‘established himself as a force to be reckoned with amongst his peers which include former WSOP and WPT champions.’
However, his results don’t seem to fit that description, and his opinions about Selbst seem equally as perplexing.
In a piece he originally entitled ‘Vanessa Selbst sucks!– A better case for why online poker should be legal,’ but has since amended, Bernstein went on to criticise Vanessa Selbst as a poker player before then detailing the reasons for his bizarre judgement.
Amongst Bernstein’s criticm of Selbst are what he describes as her “bone-headed plays,” “reckless aggression,” and lack of understanding of the fundamentals of poker, all of which he sees as negatively impacting the chances of poker being viewed by the US government as a game of skill.
Bernstein then dismisses Selbst’s results as mere luck before then explaining in a follow up blog:
“Let me assure you that I looked at a lot of her hand histories…for every player like Vanessa who has found success at the tables with her style of play, there are millions more out there who will be losing players simply because they will not ride the same variance wave she has.”
Since publishing his diatribe on Cardplayers, Michael Bernstein’s views on Vanessa Selbst have mostly been dismissed as the rant of a frustrated and envious poker player.
As well as receiving little support from the online community, one online poster at the Two Plus Two forum by the name of NoahSD started a thread entitled “Michael Bernstein sucks!” which seems to be getting quite a few positive responses.
As one poster by the name of ‘jmill’ puts it: “I’m surprised Card Player would let someone associated with them put up garbage like this. Dude just embarrasses himself here.”