VANESSA
SELBST
GPI RANKINGS
Smart, successful and unstoppable when she’s on her game,
Vanessa is one of the biggest stars in the poker world. We talk to
her about life on and off the table, and her plans for the WSOP
Vanessa, thanks for taking the time to talk
to us. You spent most of 2014 in Europe
chasing the EPT Season 10 crown and
came very close to the PoY title. How
did you enjoy your experience?
I don’t know if I’d say I spent most
of 2014 chasing the PoY crown. I
skipped Deauville and Vienna,
and then wound up missing most
of Monte Carlo as well. I did go to
San Remo early in the hope of
catching Ole Schemion, but the
events there made him pretty
much unreachable. I placed 2nd
in the 5k PLO event but failed to
get points due to a lack of
runners, and then Ole pretty
much locked it up with a win in
the high roller. It was fun to play a
lot of tournaments and chase him
for a while, but Ole really was
ridiculously impressive this year
and was clearly much more
deserving of the award.
What do you feel are the
main differences between
playing poker in Europe
and in America?
Tournaments in
America and Europe
are very different,
and both have pros
and cons. Players
are much more
aggressive in Europe.
That doesn’t mean
they’re better necessarily
– skill levels run the gamut on
both continents – but the more
aggressive style of play leads to highervariance tournaments because you’re forced
to play bigger pots and gamble with bigger
percentages of your stack. This makes it
much more difficult to go deep in
tournaments and it’s a huge reason we
hadn’t seen a repeat EPT winner until Vicky
[Victoria Coren Mitchell] pulled it off. Still, I
would say that I prefer playing in Europe
and on the EPT these days because of the
organization. So much effort and planning
is put into the entire EPT festival that once
you bust out of the main event, there is
always another great event to play later that
day or the next, and you know there will be a
big field. That makes it much more enticing
to travel to, knowing you will have lots of
chances to win money.
How has poker evolved since you first
started playing?
Oh man, poker has evolved so much, it’s
like night and day. Players are so much more
aggressive than they were before, and there
are many more great players now than there
were back then. Online poker especially has
basically become a different game, where
advanced game theory and high-level stats
analysis are now almost necessary to beat
high stakes. It wasn’t like that back in the
day. Opponents had so many leaks that
it was usually most profitable to figure out
what those were and exploit them. Now that
players are better, a lot of the game at a high
level is focusing in on one’s own game to
become less exploitable to others.
You got married late last year –
congratulations! How is married life
treating you and how do you manage to
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