Vanessa won $227,933 for her WSOP victory in the $1,500 PLOThere are not many human rights lawyers that have an alter-ego as one of the worlds top poker players – but that is exactly what Vanessa Selbst is trying to achieve.
Commonly known online as ‘fslexcduck’, Selbst made headlines at the 2008 WSOP with her stunning victory in the $1,500 PLO Event – but she has been turning over enormous sums of money from the game for years before this life-changing experience.
Like many of the talented young generation, Vanessa has an immaculate academic background and graduated from Yale in 2005 with a degree in Political Science. It was there that she first fell in love with poker, at some of the toughest college home games in the country.
A subsequent year spent studying in Madrid on a Fulbright Scholarship did nothing to detract her interest in the game and she confesses “I spent too much of my time in Spain just playing poker: the good old Party 10-20 days”.
Upon her return she started hitting the tournament scene hard and made her first big splash at the 2006 WSOP, where she finished 7th for $101,285 in the $2,000 NLH Event. A year later she was back at the Rio making another major score, this time in the $5,000 World Championship Heads-Up NLH Event; a 3rd place finish for $128,968 only served to whet her appetite for a bracelet.
While playing cash (“anything from $1-$2 to $100-$200”) in between, 2008 finally proved to be the genuine break-through year for Selbst. In February she took down the WPT Ladies Championship for $26,500, defeating fellow pro Erica Schoenberg in heads-up play. She then made a modest cash in the World Series $2,500 NLH (34th, $14,138) before besting 759 runners to take down her first ever bracelet in the $1,500 PLO. Perhaps her most telling hand along the way was knocking out PV’s very own Tony Phillips in a huge pot shortly before the final table. In an interview with Poker Listings her logic behind the hand was simple:
“When I got re-repotted by Tony, I know that he’s got aces at that point, I thought about it for a while…. It came down to the fact that if I folded, Tony would have more chips than me. He’s a very aggressive, very skilled player who’s going to have position on me on the final table, so you know what? I’m playing for the bracelet, I want to gamble it up here, it gives me a chance to knock out Tony, who will otherwise have more chips than me, have position and be outplaying me the next day on the final.”
She followed this up with a second consecutive 3rd place in the Championship NLH Heads-Up Event ($108,288) to take her live tournament winnings beyond the $680,000 mark; and she says she has never taken up poker as a full-time profession.
Being raised in Montclair, New Jersey, perhaps made her a natural choice to be an executive producer and coach for training site Deuces Cracked, who boast many of New York’s finest players in their ranks (including Ariel ‘DaEvils Schneller). According to the site, she specialises in short-handed NLH play and has mentored over 40 students to take their games to new levels.
But what makes Selbst unique in the poker world is her ability to focus on ‘a life outside of poker’, as she calls it, while still playing. She is currently back in Yale training to be a human rights lawyer and has even considered chucking poker in to focus completely on her studies. She also volunteers every week for a non-profit organisation in Brooklyn and is a former head of the Yale Queer-Straight Alliance.
As Selbst said after her bracelet win:
“The fact that I can flip coins for $80,000 shows what advantages I have. I’m passionate about giving back, and I’m lucky to be in a position where I can work for a salary that isn’t huge and still have a tangible life through poker or whatever else. I think it’s important for everyone to do their part, it’s important to do other things otherwise you’d just go crazy and gamble all the time. Whatever it is, I think you just have to things to keep your sanity and help the rest of the world.”
This is certainly a unique attitude at the pinnacle of live and online poker today.
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