Vanessa Selbst didn’t hide her professional poker career from professors and classmates while attending Yale Law School.
She just put the game on hold for a couple of years. Selbst closed out her online accounts and stayed away from the tables.
“When you’re in poker, you’re really into it and you want to play all the time,” Selbst said. “I tried to force poker from my mind. I pretty much had to remove myself from that while I was in New Haven (Conn.)”
The PokerStars.it EPT San Remo reached their final table earlier and the most notable player remaining in the field when play resumes Wednesday afternoon (6am ET for those in the US) will be Liv Boeree. Following the wins of Annie Duke at the NBC Heads-Up and Vanessa Selbst at the PokerStars NAPT Mohegan Sun event so far this year, could Boeree follow in their footsteps tomorrow? The final table will be seated as follows:
Seat 1: Claudio Piceci – 4,460,000
Seat 2: Alexey Rybin – 1,890,000
Seat 3: Atanas Gueorguiev – 2,520,000
Seat 4: Jakob Carlsson – 13,525,000
Seat 5: Giuseppe Diep – 1,830,000
Seat 6: Liv Boeree – 3,440,000
Seat 7: Toni Pettersson – 5,035,000
Seat 8: Michael Piper – 4,600,000
Updates will be available over at PokerNews, along with live streaming video of the final table over at www.PokerStars.tv at 6am ET.
The final table of the $5,000 PokerStars NAPT Mohegan Sun Main Event came to a conclusion early Sunday evening, with Vanessa Selbst taking down the title in dominating fashion. In an interesting quirk, like her 2008 WSOP PLO bracelet win over Jamie Pickering, she defeated a strip club owner, Mike Beasley in heads-up play. Beasley held the chip lead at the final table, but within 30 minutes Selbst had regained the lead, and her aggressive style meant she never relinquished her hold on the lead. Her win brought up debate on Twitter inquiring if her win would help get more women into the game, a topic that has appeared at Pokerati here and here for two examples.
Here’s the full final table results, with the edited final table coverage on ESPN2 May 10th at 10pm ET:
1 – Vanessa Selbst, $750,000
2 – Mike Beasley, $428,000
3 – Mike Woods, $240,000
4 – Scott Seiver, $190,000
5 – Alistar Melville, $150,000
6 – Derek Raymond, $115,000
7 – Cliff Josephy, $85,000
8 – Jonathan Aguiar, $60,244
The final table of the $5,000 PokerStars NAPT Main Event at the Mohegan Sun in Connecticut will be starting at noon Eastern time. Here’s how the final table will be situated, with live streaming available at www.pokerstars.tv:
Beasley took the chip lead on the final hand of play on Saturday when he eliminated Brandon Hall in 9th place. The four WSOP bracelet winners (Selbst, Josephy, Raymond and Seiver) will look to add a NAPT title to their results. When play resumes, there will be about 30 minutes left at level 26, 25,000/50,000 with a 5,000 ante. The poker world will still be focused at the Mohegan Sun on Monday as the $25,000 High Roller Bounty Shootout will get underway, with the shootout winners playing Tuesday to determine a winner. Full coverage will also be available at pokerstars.tv, with edited coverage to air in the coming months on ESPN2 of both the Main Event and Shootout.
The big tournament going on right now is the Mohegan Sun $5k main event … make the the NAPT-Mohegan Sun main event … make that the PokerStars.net NAPT Mohegan Sun Main Event.
To some extent, this was a proof-in-the-pudding tournament for the fledgling-but-promising North American Poker Tour. They pulled off a total hit a couple months ago in Las Vegas at the Venetian … but that was in Las Vegas, where most of the pros live and tourists love to travel to — this is Uncasville, Connecticut! But still … turned out Mohegan Sun has proved that NAPT events can indeed draw enough top-rank talent across the country for a $5k event worthy of televising on ESPN2.
The event set Mohegan Sun records for both attendance and prizepool. They got 716 players … more than 100 of whom will chop up nearly $3.3 million … and top prize is a handsome $750k.
Several years after it was initially proposed, the NAPT, presented by PokerStars, is now actually happening with Joanna Krupa being their host. The PCA currently taking place in the Bahamas is the first tour stop, with the Venetian holding the first NAPT in the US with a $5,000 Main Event taking place February 20-24 as part of their DeepStack Extravaganza (running against the LA Poker Classic). Their next stop will be held at the Mohegan Sun in Connecticut in April, with a series of 20 tournaments with buyins ranging from $200 to a $25,000 “High Roller” event. Their main event will also consist of a $5,000 buyin. More details can be found over at the PokerStarsblog.com and this clip from PokerNews:
