UNCASVILLE, CONNECTICUT, April 11, 2010 – In professional sports, few things are sweeter than winning the biggest game of your career on home turf. New Haven, Connecticut native Vanessa Selbst now knows the feeling.
A 50-minute drive on the I-95 will take you from New Haven to Uncasville, Connecticut, home of the Mohegan Sun casino; the second largest casino in the United States and host of the first annual PokerStars.net NAPT Mohegan Sun Main Event. The five-day, $5,000 buy-in championship Main Event attracted 716 runners from more than 20 countries, smashing records for both attendance and total prizepool ($3,264,244) for a poker tournament at Mohegan Sun.
At the end of Day 1, Selbst finished second in chips, behind then leader David Williams. From there, she never dropped lower than third in chips at any point in the tournament and put on a clinic in deep-stack poker at the final table, en route to earning the largest payday of her career.
“It feels awesome (winning close to home). The most meaningful part of this for me was definitely having a lot of my friends that don’t play poker and a lot of my friends from law school see this, and my girlfriend was able to come,” Selbst said. “It was just really great to have everybody here and to see this. This is the hugest moment that I’ve had in poker so far, so it was really nice to have everybody so close.”
The 25-year-old is working toward a law degree in civil rights at her undergraduate alma mater, Yale University, and despite being $750,000 richer, Selbst said she has every intention of finishing school. When asked where this accomplishment ranks amongst her poker accolades, Selbst replied:
“”This is at the top. I mean, I know that a bracelet is supposed to be prestigious, but let’s be honest… That was $230 grand, and this is $750 grand, so… You can’t argue with the dollar signs.”
A wealth of PokerStars.net Players reached the final table including Main Event runner-up Michael Beasley ($428,000), Scott Seiver (4th, $190,000), Derek Raymond (6th, $115,000), Cliff “JohnnyBax” Josephy ($85,000) and Jonathan “FatalError” Aguiar (8th, $60,244).
Four new members of Team PokerStars Canada made their debuts at the NAPT Mohegan Sun Main Event. Greg DeBora, Marcello Del Grosso, Pat Pezzin and Anh Van Nguyen joined Daniel Negreanu and Darus Suharto to form a new-look Canadian team, expected to compete at future NAPT stops. Del Grosso had the most profitable debut of the new Team Pros, cashing in 89th place, good for a $7,500 payday.
Team PokerStars USA members Vanessa Rousso and Dennis Phillips also cashed in the main event; Rousso in tenth place ($47,000) and Phillips in 86th ($8,500). Rousso’s performance was especially noteworthy, as she managed to best her 25th place finish at NAPT Venetian ($18,080) back in February.
FINAL TABLE PAYOUTS:
1st: Vanessa Selbst (USA) – $750,000
2nd: Michael Beasley, PokerStars.net Player (USA) – $428,000
3rd: Michael Woods (USA) – $240,000
4th: Scott Seiver, PokerStars.net Player (USA) – $190,000
5th: Alistar “Al” Melville (Canada) – $150,000
6th: Derek Raymond, PokerStars.net Player (USA) – $115,000
7th: Cliff “JohnnyBax” Josephy, PokerStars.net Player (USA) – $85,000
8th: Jonathan “FatalError” Aguiar, PokerStars.net Player (USA) – $60,244
The NAPT Mohegan Sun Main Event final table was streamed on a five-minute delay over the Internet via NAPT Live at www.napt.com/tv.
The 2010 NAPT Mohegan Sun tournament series concludes on Tuesday with the final table of the $25,000 buy-in High Roller Bounty Shootout, which starts at 12:00 p.m. EST on Monday, April 12th. Team PokerStars Pros Daniel Negreanu, Greg Raymer, Barry Greenstein and Jason Mercier are all expected to play.
