At just thirty-three years young, Brooklyn-born Vanessa Selbst can easily be called the best woman poker player in the world.
Selbst ranks #1 on the female poker player money list and #41 on the all-time list. She boasts three WSOP bracelets, eight final tables, 20 money finishes, and two WPT final tables. Her highest WSOP Main Event money finish was 73rd in 2012, and she is the only woman to have won three bracelets in WSOP open events.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Selbst also holds a J.D. from Yale University–talk about an overachiever!
I’ve also met Mike and heartily concur. He was known as “Gentleman Mike” because he actually IS a gentleman. I don’t remember which year, but he showed up in a tuxedo for a WSOP final event dressed in the late 80s or early 90s (he only wore it the first day, LOL). He was also one of the very few professional poker players who was sponsored by a clothing company whose name I don’t immediately recall, but he always wore their shirts at games. Heck of a nice guy and a great ambassador for poker.
Don’t forget Susie Isaacs or June Fields. June founded the Card Player Magazine and was a terrific player. Susie won the Ladies’ WSOP event in both 1996 and 1997, and has finished in the money in several other WSOP events.
Annie Dukes was 9 months pregnant with her third child when she placed 10th out of a total of 512 players in 2000 World Championship which was the second-highest finish by a woman in the event’s history. She won a WSOP bracelet in 2004. She won the first “WSOP tournament of champions”
Her book Decide to Play Great Poker is well worth a read and I posted a free link to it in “the links library” thread.
Could not resist weighing in with the salute to the ladies. My favourite woman player is Victoria Coren-Mitchell, who when being inverviewed on Sky after winning a tournament said “My only regret in my poker life was falling in love with another Poker Player” She went on to marry David Mitchell, television celebrity and author and now has a very successful career in television herself, presenting a cerebally challenging quiz called Only Connect and hosting many talk shows.
Coren Mitchell was the first woman to win an event on the European Poker Tour, the first player to win both a televised professional tournament (EPT London 2006) and a televised celebrity tournament (Celebrity Poker Club 2005), and the first player to win two European Poker Tour Main Events (EPT London 2006 and EPT Sanremo 2014). She frequently plays Texas hold 'em at the Victoria Casino in London’s Edgware Road. As a commentator/presenter, she has presented Late Night Poker and The Poker Nations Cup for Channel 4, World Poker Tour for ITV2 and commentated on The Monte Carlo EPT, Grosvenor UK Poker Tour (Channel 4), Ultimate Poker Challenge (Channel 5) and William Hill Poker Grand Prix 2 (Sky Sports).
I strongly disagree!
Unless of course you think that mentioning Sam Farha, Bill Boyd, Doyle Brunson, and other men in this thread, also trivializes them.
The biggest total prize pool in history was the 2006 WSOP Main Event, with $82,512,162 up for grabs. Jamie Gold took 1st place and a cool $12 million.
The biggest 1st place finish was in the The Big One for One Drop tournament during the 2012 WSOP (Event 55). Antonio Esfandiari won it, taking the $18,346,673 payout.
And by the way, mentioning anything in a trivia thread trivializes it.
Give it up SunPower. I’ve been married 40 years and I can tell you, good intentions be damned, any attempt at a compliment can still offend a person. Try holding a door open sometime.
There’s an interesting variation of Hold’em called Crazy Pineapple. Players are dealt 3 hole cards. but have to discard 1 of them after the flop. It’s a fun game and usually lives up to the “crazy” part of its name.
Poker players often make “prop bets” (short for proposition) that can get a little crazy. Her’s a few examples…
Tom Dwan once bet Phil Ivey a million dollars that Ivey couldn’t go a year without eating meat. He accepted the bet, saying that he wanted to go vegan anyway. 20 days later, Ivey gave up, buying out of the bet for $150,000.
In 1996, Brian Zembic got breast implants in order to win a $100,000 bet. The bet specified that he would have to keep them a year. Zembec won the bet and decided to keep them, saying they were a great conversation starter. It’s said he was also willing to show them if the price was right.
Amarillo Slim once bet that he could outrun a horse in a 100 yard race, as long as he got to choose the track. The bet was accepted, and Slim picked a 50 yard track. By the time the horse had slowed enough to turn around, Slim was crossing the finish line.
Slim also bet someone that he could hit a golf ball more than a mile. He won the bet by hitting it on a frozen lake.
Give it up SunPower. I’ve been married 40 years and I can tell you, good intentions be damned, any attempt at a compliment can still offend a person. Try holding a door open sometime. 
