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Imagine this:
You have just entered the brand new $5,000 Heads-Up No Limit Hold’em World Championship tournament at the World Series of Poker. The field has nearly 400 players, and they will be playing heads-up matches until every person but one has been beaten.
Only a handful of women have entered this event and you are one of them. You know a lot of the players will handicap you. They shouldn’t. You play just as well as they do. You play better than most of them. But they will, and you just have to play through it and not let it bother you.
You breathe a sigh of relief as they announce the first round match-ups. You received a bye and will not have to play until the second round. You take a walk around the room and notice the likes of Michael Mizrachi, Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, and Chris Ferguson playing in their matches. In fact, it’s pretty difficult to find matches with people you don’t recognize.
What was I thinking?! Why did I just spend $5,000 to play the best players in the world? Get me out!!
I think it is safe to say a lot of us would feel this way.
Vanessa Selbst never did. She mowed down her opponents to make it to the Final Four and didn’t think twice about it. “I’ve been playing poker a long time. I was never intimidated or worried about my opponents. I just took it one match at a time,” Vanessa told Bluff. That is a pretty incredible statement when you consider the list of players she went through to get that far.
Round 1: Bye
Round 2: Amir Vahedi
Round 3: Doyle Brunson
Round 4: Layne Flack
Round 5: Peter Jetten
Round 6: Paul Wasicka
Round 7: Shannon Shorr
Her list of victims is so impressive that it’s difficult to pick out one victory as more significant than another. The aggressive and unpredictable Vahedi? The Godfather of poker and perhaps the most famous of all time in Brunson? The tricky, eccentric, multibracelet winner Flack? The successful internet player and member of the internet player group Ship it Holla Ballas Jetten? Then, of course, there is Wasicka, the reigning NBC Heads-Up Champion who had won 13 straight heads-up matches and seemed unstoppable. And after upsetting Wasicka, she was matched with Shannon Shorr, one of the most successful tournament players of the past couple years.
She beat them all.
Vanessa ended up facing a very tough young internet player by the name of Dan Schreiber and was defeated, giving her a third-place finish in the event for over $100,000.
When Vanessa isn’t playing poker, she gives her time to a non-profit organization in Brooklyn. The organization is Make the Road by Walking (www.maketheroad.org), where she freely gives her time and care for the good of the community. Make the Road by Walking brings low-income New Yorkers together to promote civil rights and economic justice.
Because her position at Make the Road is that of a volunteer, she provides herself income by playing poker. Vanessa plays No Limit cash games online where she is a feared and aggressive player. She learned to play the game at Yale University (where Vanessa was a Fulbright scholar) and spent a lot of time playing and learning with fellow classmate and now professional poker player Alex Jacob.
Most of her time was spent playing at Foxwoods Casino or online, but the past two summers she has made the journey to Las Vegas to play in the World Series of Poker, where she has quickly made a name for herself. In 2006, she made her first final table in a $2,000 No Limit event, winning over $100,000. This year she made another final table in the Ladies event as well as her 3rd place finish in the Heads-Up event. Her success has to put her in the ranks of the best female tournament players at the WSOP this year. But Vanessa seeks a greater recognition. “It would be nice to be considered one of the best female players, but I would like to be in the discussion of being one of the best poker players, male or female.”
Performances like this one, where she runs through a field of the best poker players (male or female) in the world, put her on the right path to make that happen.
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