Professional poker player, Vanessa Selbst dominated the tables at the 2010 PokerStars.net North American Poker Tour (NAPT) at the Mohegan Sun. Starting on day one Vanessa put her aggression, intelligence and poker savvy on overload to amass chips, knock out players and remain in the top three for the five days of play.

Vanessa Selbst began playing poker in high school where she quickly learned that she had a knack for the game and a penchant for the money she could and did win from her classmates. She took her game to the next level in 2004 while studying at Yale University where she steadily built her bankroll to be able to play in $10-20 and $25-50 cash games online.

Now she can be seen at almost any level, from $1-2 up to $200-400. Vanessa’s competitive nature and natural talent for the game has earned her 5 first place finishes, $1,672,855 in earnings to date and a World Series of Poker bracelet.

Vanessa came into day one of the NAPT with $30,000 in chips just like the other 715 players but by the end of the day was able to build her chip stack to an impressive $214,000 through some well played hands and insistent demeanor.

Days two through four brought more of the same for Vanessa. She was able to use her chips to roll over the competition and move to the final table in second chip-position with a stack of 4,545,000.

On day five at the final table Vanessa poured on all she had. She eliminated two of her opponents and amassed a chip stack of $18,810,000 going into heads up play which was more than six times the amount of her heads-up competition, Mike Beasley. The match between the two lasted only thirty minutes and ended when Vanessa rivered a pair. Beasley collected $428,000 for his effort while Vanessa collected a champion prizepool of $750,000 and the distinction of becoming the first female champion of an NAPT event.

Seeing women like Vanessa Selbst take on the odds and make the dream of being the champion on the felt come true is an inspiration to all the women working towards that same goal. Congratulations, Vanessa!