Poker Player Profile – Poker Player Vanessa Selbst

A Yale law student, Vanessa Selbst spends her free time dominating poker tournaments, with particular success at the WSOP.

Background of Vanessa Selbst

Vanessa Selbst was born in July 1984 in Brooklyn, New York. She began studying at MIT, but halfway through her undergraduate degree she transferred to Yale on a Fullbright scholarship. She is a graduate of Yale University and is currently studying law at Yale Law School. She intends to pursue a career in the area of civil rights law. While making money in poker tournaments and improving her game, Selbst spent time in an unpaid legal internship at Make the Road by Walking, a Brooklyn-based non-profit organization. She is an American female professional poker player. Selbst uses the online screen name "fslexduck" and she has been seen with a little black plastic duck sitting on top of her pile of chips as a tribute to this nickname.

Vanessa Selbst's Poker Career

Selbst began playing poker with her friends, for fun, during her freshman year of college once she moved to Yale. She practiced her game and improved her strategy while playing at Foxwoods Poker room until she was ready for a shot at tournament play after she graduated in 2005. She began to play in tournaments in the summer of 2006 and started with the World Series of Poker where she made a final table. In 2008, Selbst was the runner up in the $1,500 World Poker Tour (WPT) Ladies championship event from which she won $40,815. At the 2008 LA Poker Classic of the World Poker Tour Ladies, she won the $1,000 no limit hold'em event, beating fellow contestant Erica Schoenberg, to take home $26,500. In the World Poker Finals in 2008, she won the $1,850 no limit hold'em event to take home prize money of $115,000.

Vanessa Selbst's Successes at the World Series of Poker

Selbst has seen many successes at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) having won seven cash prizes, including making five final tables and two heads-up semi-finals. In 2006, she made the final table of the $2,000 no limit hold'em event where she came in seventh and won $101,285. In the 2007 $5,000 heads-up no limit hold'em world championship of the WSOP, she tied for third place in the semi-finals and won $128,968. In 2008, she reached the semi-finals of the $10,000 buy-in heads-up no limit hold'em world championship event of the WSOP to win $108,288. Also in 2008, she won the $1,500 pot limit Omaha event to walk away with her first WSOP gold bracelet and $227,933 in prize money. That year, she was the first women poker player to win an open buy-in event.

Current Stats for Vanessa Selbst

As of 2008, Selbst has won more than $790,000 in prize money. Selbst is a coach and executive producer at DeucesCracked.com which is an online poker training site. She makes training videos and offers private coaching to students at the site. Selbst believes that it is important to have a balanced life. Despite her successes as a professional poker player, she plans to continue her studies at Yale Law School and work for human rights.