Vanessa Selbst: Queen of Cards

Poker: the ultimate boys’ club. The green felt table has played host to cigars, brandy and buttoned up suits all too often in stereotype, but you might be surprised to find the modern reality is quite different. Long gone are the days of only Bond and the unscrupulous rich dolling out the dice. Now poker is online. Poker is a circuit, a sport, available on practically everything from your phone to your smart fridge.

And where there’s money, there’s competition. Vanessa Selbst is the best female poker player in the world – statically, at least. She’s the only woman to have ever reached the number one rank under the Global Poker Index. She’s won three World Poker Series brackets. She is, amongst many other things, an undoubted champion with winnings in her pocket. And yet Selbst has touted her own retirement more than once in recent months. Queen of the cards, she just can’t walk away.

A Back and Forth Champion

The new year of 2018 came around with an announcement. Selbst, one of the most prolific names in the entirety of the poker scene, would be retiring to her home in New York with her wife. A graduate of Yale Law School and employee of Bridgewater Associates, her family and external careers would now appear to be taking priority. And yet, just two weeks after the announcement, she would go on to compete once more in a Hard Rock tournament. Selbst was in full-time employment, ‘playing for fun’ in her own words. It was odd, but certainly not against the rules.

Come June and she’d take to prolific tables for a second time since said retirement announcement, competing in World Series of Poker events in and around Las Vegas. Selbst went with the intention of donating any and all profits to charity – the Make the Road charity to be exact, which works to protect and ensure the safety of immigrants in the United States. Whilst she certainly wouldn’t be playing for personal gain, Selbst would still be at the table fighting for her cause, back in her element, back in her natural environment. She had retired, but she certainly hadn’t vanished altogether.

Pictured: Vanessa Selbst cheerful at her winnings. Source: Facebook

And it’s not surprising that this ‘retirement’ has so far been marked by various well-meaning appearances. Poker is a hobby and a passion as much as anything else. Like Fedor Holz before her, also a star in the scene, our titular lady enjoys the game too much to just turn around and walk away indefinitely. Holz himself reportedly retired in 2016, but he too regularly partakes in the cards and chips, often for less philanthropic purposes.

And why not? Poker is a thrill – and the money’s a big part of the attraction.

Her Winnings Total Over $11m

Selbst’s overall career winnings total over $11 million. That makes her the highest-earning woman in the modern game of Texas Hold ‘Em to this date. It also makes her the only player ever to have won the same North American Poker Tour event twice in a row, and an icon for all other women breaking in and onto the scene. Poker might be about luck on a fundamental level, but this is one shemazing lady who can play the odds to the top time and time again. The numbers don’t lie. 21 six-figure pay-outs later and Selbst knows that better than anyone. She’s a woman at the top of the World Series of Poker leaderboards, with three bracelets total. No wonder she keeps coming back for more. The game just keeps getting bigger and better!

And while it’s certainly true that the poker industry has seen immense growth of the years of Selbst’s play, that growth has taken place both on and offline in terms of the game. Vegas might be the most well-known battleground in which the legendary competition takes place, but more recently, mobile gaming has made an appearance. Yep, that’s right. Poker on your phone might just be bigger than poker at an actual table. Gaming is a market worth billions: $108.9 billion in 2017 to be exact, and mobile gaming takes up to a 42% share of that humongous figure. Selbst herself has even gotten involved in times gone by. She was both a coach and executive producer for DeucesCracked, a training website for card amateurs and veterans alike. With so many game types and such easy access, it’s likely that the Texas Hold ‘Em player base will only continue to grow in the future as information and entertainment spread across the globe.

And what does that mean? Well, hopefully, it means more female players like Selbst. Hopefully, it means more competition for the scene, a higher standard of play, higher winnings, and maybe even a successor in the works. Someone that could one day give even Selbst a run for her hard-earned cash, perhaps?

One of Many

Vanessa Selbst is the star of this article – a woman that’s risen to the top despite her competing in a mostly male-dominated industry and game, retired, returned and retired again. But she’s hardly the only lady at the table; there are other serious female poker players out there too, and even more on the above mobile and online platforms playing at a casual level. Take Annette Obrestad, for example.

Pictured: Annette Obrestad at the table with hands on chips. Source: Facebook

Annette is the youngest person to ever win a World Series of Poker bracelet, doing so at just 18 years old. Her career in the game had begun only three years earlier, playing on the web without ever depositing a cent of her own. Obrestad claims she earned her initial bank by winning free entry tournaments, and things only escalated from there. According to Obrestad, she once even played a tournament without a single viewing of her cards (save for a single exception during an all-in). Obrestad believes that paying attention to the other players around you is just as important as your hand itself, and her winnings seem testament to that fact.

Then there’s Kathleen Liebert, a woman that’s made six World Poker Tour finals tables in her career and earnt herself winnings exceeding $6 million. Both a commentator and competitor, she even won the 2005 Poker Royale ‘Battle of the Sexes,’ a callback to the tennis equivalent decades before.

The world of women in poker is not as shallow as it seems, then. Vanessa might be top dog, but there are plenty of others with sizeable earnings and excellent strategy at baying at her now retired heels. And what does the future hold for Selbst? Things remain uncertain. Her charity and casual appearances hint at the possibility of future seats around the table, but they’re in no way guaranteed. Selbst has had a decade-long career full of success. Perhaps, with the exception of charity and entertainment, it’s right to hang up the cards once and for all.

 

Feature Image: Vanessa Selbst ready for competition. Source: Facebook