Vanessa Selbst

Vanessa Selbst is an American former professional poker player with more than $11.9 million in career earnings.

She is one of only three female poker players to have won three WSOP bracelets (Barbara Enright and Nani Dollison) but is the only player to have achieved this feat only in "open" events.

Selbst is arguably one of the best female poker players in history. A former PokerStars Team Pro, she retired from poker in 2018.

"Poker has given me so much over the last 12 years," she said at the time. "It has been intellectually challenging, exhilarating, fun, and extremely rewarding. It has given me the opportunity to travel to places I might never have experienced, and forge friendships with people from all over the world."

Since retiring, she has had two children with her wife Miranda Foster, who she married in 2013.

Biography

Vanessa Selbst was born in 1984 in Brooklyn, New York. She first attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but had soon changed to Yale where she studied Political Science. It was during that time that she started playing poker. Home games were quickly replaced by cash games at the Foxwoods poker room. After warming up at the casino cash games, in 2006 Selbst traveled to Vegas for her first World Series and has been a regular in many of the world's major poker tournaments ever since.

Selbst at the WSOP

She first played at the WSOP in 2006, making a final table appearance in the $2,000 No-Limit Hold'em. The following year she racked up two more final table appearances, before winning her first WSOP bracelet in 2008 in the $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha. She also finished third in the $10,000 Heads-Up event.

In 2012 she took home her second WSOP bracelet after winning the $2,500 10-Game Mix event.

Her third WSOP bracelet came in 2014, winning the $25,000 No-Limit Hold'em Mixed Max event for $871,148, one of the largest cashes of her career.

Vanessa Selbst's Top 5 WSOP Results

Other Poker Achievements

Selbst is the only player to score back-to-back North American Poker Tour titles. She won her first NAPT title in 2010 by taking down the Mohegan Sun Main Event for $750,000. One year after she came back to defend the title and she did, this time taking home $450,000 in cash.

The 2010 was also the year when Selbst decided to take her game outside the U.S. She cashed in two Aussie Millions events, and then collected the biggest cash prize of her career in Cannes, France after winning the Partouche Poker Tour Main Event for �1,300,000.

In 2014, she was the first woman to play in the Big One for One Drop. The following year, she won the Super High Roller Celebrity Shootout for $1,000,000.