Card Player Profile: Vanessa Selbst

In the summer of 2006, Vanessa Selbst made her first-ever televised final table at the World Series of Poker, and the world was introduced to her “go big or go home” attitude. Since then, she has made several major tournament cashes, proving her mettle in both open and ladies-only events. Among her accomplishments are three WSOP final tables, three cashes in this year’s L.A. Poker Classic prelims, and, most recently, a second-place finish in the World Poker Tour Ladies Championship.

Card Player caught up with Selbst to talk about her short but illustrious poker career thus far, and moving forward.

Kristy Arnett: First of all, Vanessa, how did you get into poker?

Vanessa Selbst: I used to play with friends, sort of the same story as everyone else. I got to play a lot in college. We played cash games. I started taking the game seriously my junior year of college in ’04.

KA: While you were in college, were there any casinos around near you where you got a lot of experience?

VS: I went to Yale, so it is an hour away from Foxwoods. Senior year, I was going to Foxwoods basically every day or every other day for a while. I started out playing a $5-$5 (no-limit hold’em) cash game, and then that changed to a $5-$10. Sometimes, on the weekend, I would play $10-$25. When I first got started, I was playing $5-$5 completely under-rolled, but as I started to build up a bankroll, I played bigger games.

KA: Your first few major tournament cashes came at the 2006 World Series of Poker. Was that at the beginning of your tournament experience?

VS: Yeah, I hadn’t really played many tournaments before that. I’ve mostly been a cash-game player, and, until recently, I didn’t play a lot of tournaments.

KA: What made you decide to play in the WSOP?

VS: Well it’s the World Series, so I said “Why not?” I decided to move to Vegas for the summer. I never spent that much time there, and I wanted to play a lot of live cash games. I didn’t play very many tournaments, but I heard that there was relatively easy competition, so I decided to give it a shot.

I was sort of playing tournaments the way I play cash games, and it worked out for me. Well, it works out until you bust. I was playing a lot of hands and with an aggressive style. It is maybe ideal for tournaments, because I wasn’t really worried about my tournament life. It actually worked out pretty well. Since I accumulated a big stack early on, it didn’t really matter that I wasn’t thinking about my tournament life, because it was never my tournament life that was on the line. You can’t take too many 65-35s or 60-40s if you can’t afford to lose a couple. So, it worked out that I built a big stack early, but then, it was either go deep or go home. That was basically how I was playing tournaments.

KA: You made your televised final-table debut at the 2006 WSOP in a $2,000 buy-in no-limit hold’em event and placed seventh. On the hand you were eliminated in, you had 5 2 and you raised preflop, got re-raised, and pushed all in into pocket aces. Now, when some people watched it on television, they were a little shocked, right?

VS: Oh, yeah! I got a ton of flack for it. I still get a ton of flack for it. Still, at a final table, it isn’t something people do very often, but I think that as the games have gotten a lot more aggressive preflop, people understand now why I made that play. But it was funny because that aired back before people were really raising and re-raising a ton without big hands.

KA: When I watched that hand, I was thinking, she is second in chips against the chip and leader, and this is absolutely brilliant and ballsy, because he has to fold almost all hands!

VS: Yes, exactly. If he has A-Q he folds, and I look like a genius. If he has aces, I look like an idiot. That’s the way it goes.

KA: Your second WSOP final table came at the ladies championship, and you‘ve definitely been successful in women-only tournaments, winning an event during this year’s L.A. Poker Classic and placing second in the WPT Ladies Championship. What do you think makes you so successful in these events?

VS: I just think that they better suit my style. In terms of the fact that the players are less willing to take risks and gamble. A lot of them don’t play a ton of poker. Like at the World Series, if that is the only event they are playing in, they don’t want to bust out, and so applying pressure on them works a lot better. In other tournaments, if you put pressure on someone, especially if it is early in the tournament, they are more willing to gamble. With women, I find that if I’m raising with my draws, it is more effective, because I am willing to gamble and they are not. And they know that, so they don’t want to play big pots with me because they are a little bit more afraid. Plus, a lot of the women are a little less experienced, so I think it is a combination of those two things.

KA: You came in third, in the 2007 WSOP heads-up event. What was your edge in that tournament?

VS: I have a lot of experience heads up, and since a lot of players are less experienced, you see the same line over and over again, so you eventually get to know what they mean. I start to know what hands they’re taking these lines with, generally.

KA: Can you explain exactly what lines are and how you use the recognition of them to your advantage?

VS: Basically, a line in a poker hand is a series of actions you take. A lot of times when playing a poker hand, you sort of have an idea in advance of what you are going to do, so you aren’t just like, “Well, I’m going to bet and see what happens.” It’s more like, “OK, I’m going to bet, and if he calls, I’m probably going to check the turn, and if he checks behind then bets the river, then I will do this.”

You have a series of events in your head already planned out at the beginning of every hand. So, if you see a line from a player, and it winds up being similar to how other players play the same hand, it makes it easier, especially heads up. You’ll see spots where it is pretty obvious someone is going to bluff, or where someone raises and you know they don’t have x, y, and z hands, or whatever it is, just from experience.

KA: Since you’ve been on TV and have made numerous major tournament cashes, do you feel like players are playing against you differently?

VS: Definitely, and it is really frustrating when I’m not getting cards and really great when I am. It’s not like I just happened to be on TV, I just happened to be on TV making, like, the most ridiculous play ever, so they think that I don’t think about poker, and that I just bet. So, in situations where most people don’t call because it is almost never a bluff, I’m going to get called, because I could have 9-2.

KA: What are you future goals for poker? Do you want keep playing poker professionally?

VS: Right now, I’m part of a training website called deucescracked.com, and I definitely want to continue with that, making training videos, but as for playing professionally, I’m not sure. I’m going to Law School in the fall.

KA: The World Series of Poker is coming up, are you heading to Vegas soon?

VS: Yeah, I’m going to be playing a lot of events this summer, but this is my last series of events for a while, though. I’m going to concentrate on school.

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