Is Tiffany Williamson qualified to write a poker column

[betgo]

I assume the main reason James McManus' poker columns in the NY Times have been so bad is that he doesn't know enough about poker to write them. The bridge, backgammon, and chess columns in the NY Times are all writen by top players. Someone who came in 5th in the US Open Chess Championship would have to be a very strong player, even if he was not a big name. The same is not true for poker.

McManus is a very polished professional writer. His book on his 5th place WSOP ME finish was well written, interesting, and entertaining, but very naive about poker strategy.

You have to pay to read back articles on the NY Times website, but the two ones posted here were atrocious.

His review of HOHv1 and SS2 just summarized the contents of each book. I never had seen a review like that. It appeared he read neither book. Any professional player would want to read both books anyway atleast once. Even someone with no familiarity with poker could see what was wrong with this review.

In his latest article, on AQ, he quotes at length weak/tight BS from Cloutier/McEvoy saying you should fold AQ in the first 5 positions and you shouldn't call a raise with AQ. Then he gives 2 examples of AQ allin preflop losing to Ax as a 3-1 favorite. There is no discussion of how AQ can be dominated, how you can make top pair and lose a big pot to a set, the problem you are in if you miss the flop, and how you are behind a pp and only slightly ahead of Kx. AQ article

Atleast McManus is an excellent writer. The same cannot be said of Robert Varkonyi who writes a column in Card Player. Varkonyi is a competent poker player, but his articles are not well written and have little content.
Varkonyi reveals his secrets to winning the WSOP