The list is perhaps best regarded as a beauty contest, the entrants for which all had to meet some loose requirement that they be generally known as part of the poker “community” (i.e., players and media). Of course, while even the Miss America pageant has a talent component, this particular competition appears not to have included poker-playing ability as part of the criteria with which contestants were evaluated.

Seven of the women on the list -- plus the six “Victory Poker Girls” who together come in at number #7 -- have zero listed tourney cashes. Of the rest, eight have at least six figures’ worth of career tourney earnings, with Liv Boeree (12th on the list), Sandra Naujoks (14th), and Vanessa Rousso (18th) well ahead of the rest in terms of success at the tables. Meanwhile, most of the top all-time career women earners -- Kathy Liebert, Vanessa Selbst, Annie Duke, Annette Obrestad, Jennifer Harman-Traniello, J.J. Liu -- do not appear. (See Jen Newell’s “She Said” for the full list.)

A couple of other items worth noting. One, the list is described within as an “all-time” list, although seems to be looking back no farther than a couple of years at most. Also, the list does not appear to be the result of a poll of readers but rather concluded upon by the person or persons from WPT Magazine who pulled together the feature.

Clearly the very idea of creating such a “hottest girls” compilation stems from the fact that poker remains a male-dominated game, one in which the very presence of a woman at the table -- though not nearly as unusual today as in decades past -- still provokes undue comment. Understanding that its readership is mostly male, and that poker remains for many a venue in which sexism is allowed to pass without judgment more readily than in other areas of the culture, WPT Magazine ran what seems a not-too-inspired and somewhat hastily composed feature for its latest issue.

It has been interesting to follow some of the discussion on forums and blogs regarding the list. In some cases, those responding have taken the list at face value, debating the merits of those who were included and the order in which they appear while also noting other “hottest” women in poker who were omitted. In other words, there are many who are responding to the list without any suggesting that it is at all objectionable.

There are others, however, who are responding with cynicism to the list -- that is to say, not outright criticism of the way it singles out women in poker in order to objectify them sexually, but with scorn and/or derisive comments regarding the adolescent thinking that resulted in such a feature.

A perusal of the Two Plus Two thread about the list reveals many examples of the former response -- that is, lots of instances of (likely) male posters sharing thoughts about the relative “hotness” of the women chosen as well as those who failed to make the cut. But there’s a good deal of skepticism and outright mocking of the list being shared there, too.

“The WPT magazine is a poker publication, not a girly rag,” writes one poster, who facetiously adds that they should “leave the objectification of women to the experts like Playboy” and similar publications. Another agrees, calling the list “pathetic” and noting how “I can pick up a Maxim if I want to see this crap.”

In some ways, the WPT Magazine feature recalls an instance several years ago when Card Player magazine sent out an issue that surprisingly featured Playboy playmate Stephanie Larimore on the cover (dated September 19, 2006). The issue appeared at the absolute height of the poker boom, mere weeks before the UIGEA was signed into law. Yet of all the dozens of poker-related stories that might’ve been highlighted, the magazine was weirdly highlighting a newly-launched site called NakedPoker.com for which Larimore was a spokesperson.

While there were no disclaimers in the article suggesting it to be a paid-for piece, it seemed more than obvious that the breathless prose about how “NakedPoker.com is going to be the site to watch” was not exactly motivated by uncomplicated journalistic intentions. (Incidentally, the site was already offline by the spring of 2007.) As I recall, responses to the Card Player piece were similarly dismissive, the baldfaced attempt to sell magazines (and perhaps earn some advertising dollars, too) drowning out whatever messages were being delivered by the article itself.

I think something similar may be happening among many of those responding to the WPT Magazine piece, with some dismissing it as an unsubtle ploy to sell a few extra issues. And very few if anyone regarding it as an attempt to make any kind of meaningful editorial statement about women in poker.

In-depth features about people like Pasalic, Boeree, Naujoks, Rousso, and many of the other interesting people on the list certainly would have been of genuine interest to poker fans and players, but WPT Magazine went a different route here. In fact, an actual, thoughtful list of the “hottest” women players -- i.e., in terms of their success at the tables -- could have been equally provocative in terms of starting debate, not to mention make for a much more valuable contribution to conversations about poker, generally speaking.

Perhaps such an approach might have resulted in fewer sales of the June issue. But it might have better helped WPT Magazine capture readers for July, August, and September, many of whom might now think of the magazine as more “girly rag” than source for useful poker content.

See also She Said: Marketing to an Audience or the Lowest Common Denominator?