US pro Vanessa Selbst is currently the second highest earning female tournament player on the circuit with $4,911,583 in life time earnings, including a recent win at the $5,100 L.A. Poker Classic for $140,295.

Incredibly, the 27 year-old’s success has come about while continuing her studies at Yale Law School and choosing only a limited amount of tournaments in which to compete. Talking recently to ‘Pokerstars Women,’ Vanessa gave an insight into what factors determine her choice of competitions, and explained:

“I’m not a crazy grinder so I take a lot of time off for sightseeing and relaxing, and I just play when I feel like playing. I think that helps me stay sane and focused.If I come out to play it’s because I want to be there.”

This year Vanessa Selbst’s says geography has been a major influence on her decision where to compete, as her girlfriend is currently travelling with her and they are trying to visit the most “interesting and fun places.” These include her upcoming travels to Vienna, Berlin, and Monaco for the PokerStars EPT Grand Finale.

One factor that has stayed constant, however, is the size of the buy-ins she is willing to spend, choosing rather to play in smaller buy-in tournaments with large amateur fields over small, elite high-roller competitions.

“I’m basically a bankroll nit, and I don’t love variance. While the high rollers are fun because they’re a much greater challenge and you can hit a big score, I think they’re fun to play on occasion only. The key to a successful career is about finding the best value whenever I can.”

Unfortunately, this may exclude Vanessa from entering the 2012 WSOP Million Dollar One Drop event, but she was also keen to point out she considered it a great charity event, and would enjoy taking part in it if she could raise the money.

Bodog has become the latest casualty of Spain’s imminent online regulated gaming market, and has been ordered to withdraw its business from the country. Consequently, Bodog has now sent an e-mail to its affected players, explaining:

“We would like to inform you that due to recent regulatory changes, we are no longer able to offer our betting or wagering services to residents of Spain or Spanish territories. Your account will be disabled on the 31st of March 2012 and as of today; you are no longer able to make any further deposits to your account.”

Ahead of this spring’s regulation, Spain has set June as the cut-off date for gaming companies to stop serving Spanish customers paving the way for only licenced sites to then operate legally inside the country. In the meantime, Spain has been cleaning shop with another casualty being Sportingbet, whose online gaming sites Miapuesta.com and Miapuesta.es were shut down in March, after a Spanish court ruled that “any offering of gaming or betting activity that has not been granted a prior administrative authorisation is indisputably prohibited.”

Thus far, Spain has already received around 60 gaming licence applications from top tier operators, including Betfair, Ladbrokes, bwin.party, Paddy Power, 888, and Bet365. However, in the meantime, Spanish authorities have come under criticm by gaming companies for the slow pace of granting its licences, with delays of six months being blamed on the inefficiencies of regulators, as well as other bureaucratic red tape. All the while, Spanish run gaming sites have been enjoying a lucrative period of competition free business.

Poker pro Daniel Negreanu has been banned from the TwoPlusTwo forum for a day after running foul of the site’s advertising rules.

The 37 year-old has been a regular commenter and contributor on the forum for years. Negreanu also host a weekly video blog but this time around tried to help promote his latest blog rant by posting a link on TwoPlusTwo, which met with a swift response from the world’s biggest poker forum which labelled the action as “spamming.”

Apparently, at the heart of the Canadian’s ban was his promotion of the upcoming, inaugural iSeriesLIVE next month, which is a 10 person winner takes all £10,000 ‘Sit and Go’ tournament. It then didn’t take long for some TwoPlusTwo forum members to react leading to the suspension, with a moderator later explaining:

“Daniel started a thread about iSeriesLive 2 days ago, for which he was infracted, as anyone would have been. 2 days later, he spams links to his vblog in two different threads, and the first 6:20 of the linked video is about iSeriesLive. For this he gets a one day tempban – such an easy call, no matter who it is.”

As you would expect, Negreanu then tried to explain his side of the controversy by saying that someone had started a thread about “Live Betting on Poker” and were discussing the iSeries, when he assumed they would welcome posts from knowledgeable people.

Negreanu sunsequently highlighted the fact that in the past people had discussed other leagues, tournaments, and tours on the forum without problems, with the only difference being that you can place bets on the Iseries.

Accusing the TwoPlusTwo forum of a “North Korean like approach,” Negreanu further speculated:

“Their decision to ban me and pull the threads is simply a shakedown. They are hoping that they can squeeze a few bucks out of the Iseries to put up banners, and completely overestimating their importance in the poker world, which isn’t new for them.”