Time to start vetting so called poker pros

Stop, please stop. I thought it was bad enough when Annie Duke was landing cable news TV segments earlier this year, acting as if she speaks for the poker community, but at least Annie Duke was actually a professional poker player at one point in her career. It’s bad enough that we’ve already had to deal with Beth Shak calling herself a poker pro (where do you think she got the money to buy all them shoes?) and now we have Tiffany Michelle appearing on the FOX News show Cavuto yesterday, as she put it on Twitter, “Chattin’ poker & politics today on #Cavuto. Its all a big game right? Bluffing, strategy, numbers, game theory…”

This really has nothing to do with Tiffany (or Beth) as a person or anything along those lines, but calling herself, or allowing herself to be introduced as, a professional poker player is misleading at best. That being said, my real issue is with Fox News having such a short rolodex that when they flip to “Poker/Gambling Expert” Beth Shak and Tiffany Michelle are the only entries – apparently Annie Duke was busy yesterday. Not to derail the topic but, can we get Brian Balsbaugh to do a little cable news outreach with some of his clients?

Let’s take a quick look at Tiffany’s Hendon Mob page, and see just what constitutes a poker pro these days shall we? Since November of 2010 Tiffany has cashed in two poker tournaments –that would be 32 months and two cashes. In June of 2011 she finished in 49^th place in a $550 NLHE tournament at the Deep Stack Extravaganza III, pocketing $1,135, and in March of 2013 she finished 47^th in a $300 NLHE event at the Winning O’ the Green tournament series in LA, for a cool $665.

Now I don’t know about you but if my resume over the past three years was highlighted by a pair of Top 50 finishes in small tournaments I wouldn’t feel right adding the title “Professional Poker Player” to my bio, let alone having it appear under me on TV!

And it’s not as if she was tearing up the poker world before this. She had her huge score, when she was the last woman standing in the 2008 WSOP Main Event, and other than a Heartland Poker Tour final table in 2010 (a nice $20,000 score for 7^th place) she has done absolutely nothing in poker. Tiffany is a reality TV star, and poker just happened to be her big break.

Additionally, how does the producer who books these guests (Annie Duke or Tiffany Michelle) not perform the most basic online search and see that Annie Duke is despised in the poker community and has been involved with not one but two shady businesses, or that Tiffany Michelle is not, nor was she ever, considered a poker pro. Emmitt Smith wore an FTP Patch at the NBC Heads-Up Championship in 2011, why not have him on to talk about the Barton Bill?

It actually makes me wonder about the other guests who appear on cable news as so-called experts. What do they actually do? All the time we hear people introduced as strategists, so what are they really? Are they substitute teachers? Are they ushers at the local movie theater? It really makes you wonder how they vet their other guests when FOX News will put “Professional Poker Player” under Tiffany Michelle and bring her on as an expert in the field.

Again, nothing against Tiffany, but if you’re not actually a poker pro don’t go on TV and say you are. I have no problem with her espousing her opinion (you don’t need to be a poker pro to have an opinion on poker) but why couldn’t they just call her a reality TV star with a passion for poker, and let her talk poker and politics?