GPINTERVIEW | VANESSA SELBST
VANESSA SELBST
Vanessa Selbst has won two WSOP
bracelets, in 2008 and 2012
LIVES: NEW YORK
CURRENT GPI RANK: 5
LIVE EARNINGS: $9,667,748
BIGGEST LIVE CASH: $1,823,430
WSOP CASHES: 18
WSOP BRACELETS: 2
TWITTER: VANESSASELBST
adjust to this quicker than other players. I
often see people make plays that would have
been great with 40 left but are awful with 15
left (four-bet-inducing against a 40BB stack
with a hand like T-T is a great example). I’m
just not going to make those mistakes,
which means that once I’m that deep in a
tournament, I’m going to make the final
table more often than most.
balance your poker playing with marriage
and your philanthropic efforts?
It’s really easy, I love all of it – my life at
home with my wife, friends, and dogs; my
social justice work; and poker. They’re all a
lot of fun and really rewarding. I just wish I
had more time to do more of all of it!
You founded Venture Justice in 2010. Can
you talk to us about this and your fight for
social justice?
Sure! As someone with an immense amount
of privilege, I feel strongly about my
obligation to fight for those who don’t have
that privilege, and against injustice
generally. I went to law school to work on
civil rights issues, but obviously my legal
career got put on hold when I started
winning poker tournaments. I decided to
start Venture Justice as a way to try to fulfill
that obligation while still playing full-time.
Venture Justice is my private foundation
that I started as a way to fund people who
have really interesting ideas for civil rights
projects, but don’t have the money to start.
It’s sort of like venture capital but for social
justice organizations. My vision was that
the foundation would not only fund the
projects, but that I would be able to have
input on the vision of the projects and work
with the project leader in my time off.
So far, Venture Justice has funded a
couple of different projects. Most recently
I’m using the funds for my own pet project,
which is the creation of a database and app
for videotaping police misconduct, having it
stream to the cloud while it’s recording, and
then storing and compiling the data. The
idea is to use the videos and associated