Another Trumbull alum strikes gold

I totally had forgotten about Vanessa Selbst from the Trumbull poker club at Yale. Well, she made a final table earlier at the WSOP for $101,000 and just got a nice write up on Pokerstars blog. Here she is at the final table of Event #6, $2000 No Limit Hold'em:


Here's what she said about Trumbull, when asked whether the poker was better at Yale or MIT:

Definitely Yale. In our home game, we had several great players. Alex Jacob, Ariel Schneller, Nate Mavis. Alex has made a final table this year , and we're all out playing now here in Vegas." [It was actually two final tables plus a 2nd earlier at the Foxwoods WPT event for Alex]

I love how she calls Trumbull her "home game." Yeah, a home game that often had 5k sitting on the table and 30 spectators. Honestly, I only remember playing with Vanessa maybe 3 or 4 times. And I don't remember being blown away in awe of her, like I was with Al. Or even wary of messing with her, like I was with Ariel. But I definitely remember her winning a lot of money one night, tearing apart some of the weaker players.

No wonder I was never more than an average player in those games.

I should brag a little and note that (I think) I knocked out both Meyvis and Vanessa at the final table of the 2004 Trumbull Open on the way to the title.

For more on the Trumbull game, read this article from Yale and this article from Cardplayer, or just Google it up. I'd link to the Sports Illustrated article, but I can't find it. Here's the McManus blurb from his Esquire article, correctly predicting (way back in 2004) Al's rise to greatness:

As a matter of fact, I was off that day supporting my family by making a hoity-toity presentation at Yale University. No less an eminence than Steven Smith, the Alfred Cowles professor of government, had invited me to talk about literature-the literature of poker, but still--at a master's tea. That eighty people crowded into the Branford College common room was due not at all to my eloquence, anticipated or actual, but to the dozen-plus poker games in full swing throughout Yale. Most involve students, I was told, along with some faculty-only affairs; the few in which the groups intermingle keep the stakes low enough that no student winds up paying triple tuition and no teacher grades papers gratis.

At the all-student game in the basement of Trumbull College, the action tonight is no-limit hold 'em with blinds of fifty cents and a dollar. On the evening of November 12, the competition at the too-small hexagonal table was sufficiently talented to relieve me of $290 in less than three hours. Alex Jacob. Richard Berger. Ben Morris. Remember these names, pokeristas. Beware the Trumbull game, fishes. Mr. Berger, a skinny, bearded junior who as a freshman had won a one-table satellite against touring pros Daniel Negreanu and Allen Cunningham, raked three good-sized pots I was in; he also laid down pocket jacks when I flopped a straight against him, even though the board was 8-high. Berger and his pals may have had Swahili folklore or Kantian epistemology papers a week overdue, but these guys could play.

If you have Yale library access, you can get the whole Esquire article here. (April, 2004 issue)