Vanessa Selbst melts down in Main Event Day 1, bluffs off all chips with J8 no draw, tilts on Twitter after people criticized it

[Dan Druff]

Remember when Vanessa Selbst announced to the world that she was retiring from poker, in a move only to massage her own ego with praise from her fans, and then played in an event a short time later?

Well, "retired" Selbst is at it again. And look at this expert play on Day 1 in the deepest, slowest-moving tournament in the world (by a wide margin):



So she barrels super hard on a super-dry board, which I guess is a reasonable idea if you think your opponent missed, but once he calls your large raise, it's time to realize he actually has a good piece of it, and shut down, right? Especially because you have absolutely no hand and are drawing dead against top pair on the turn, right?

Wrong. She committed all of her chips, was called, and she was out.

She's actually done this once before in the Main, and even had a big stack at the time. That was a number of years ago.

But let's focus on today.


Not surprisingly, people on Twitter were criticizing her play.

Why?

Several reasons.

- She's been known to have a temper and berate people at the table.

- She is very outspoken on Twitter about her left-wing, SJW political views, but will block anyone who even slightly disagrees with her (even if done respectfully).

- She's extremely arrogant and rubs a lot of people the wrong way.

- She has zero self-awareness, and blames any negativity aimed at her on misogyny, homophobia, or jealousy.

- She is a prominent poker pro (former poker pro?), and played a hand really, really badly.


So this tweet from "Wretchy" (Dan Martin) apparently really got Vanessa hot under the collar:

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https://twitter.com/twt/status/1014735779749220352

Wretchy's needle was likely taking aim at Vanessa's outspoken limousine liberal SJW political rants, where she often complains about other people having privilege despite being rich and white herself.

Vanessa responded by writing her own Tweet (not simply responding to Wretchy), thus giving the matter even more attention.

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https://twitter.com/twt/status/1014798280264302592

Might as well quote these for posterity, because Vanessa is known to delete her tilt-tweets:

wow pretty amazing how many genius keyboard warriors like @Wretchy there are in poker. I'll go back to my rich lifestyle indeed (that's an insult)? You know I got rich from poker, right? You maybe could too one day if you drastically improved your arrogance to skill ratio #butnah

Somehow she called him arrogant while displaying her own arrogance in the same tweet. Amazing!


You can click on that tweet to see the (mostly negative) response she got.

I liked this one:

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https://twitter.com/twt/status/1014863000820477953

A short time later, she followed up with this gem:

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https://twitter.com/twt/status/1014799569303957504

Just like in what world is it that people see a play they would never make from someone successful and the first thought is LOL IMMMA GO INSULT HER ON TWITTER BECAUSE SHE'S TERRIBLE AT POKER AND LIFE AND I AM AWESOME AND UNLUCKY AND SHE'S JUST SO LUCKY WAHHH

get a life guys

That one got even more responses:

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https://twitter.com/twt/status/1014804771901878272

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https://twitter.com/twt/status/1014806441243246593

Don't you get it, guys? Republicans supposedly hate brown people, because Vanessa said so. Therefore, it's totally different and totally okay to berate them when they're trying to respond to your political tweets.

Continued next post...

[Dan Druff]

Of course, when nearly everyone on your own Twitter is telling you how wrong you are, the smartest thing to do is make another tweet, insulting the crowd criticizing you:

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https://twitter.com/twt/status/1014803464344330240

I wish I could just ignore people's tweets but this irks me so much. Everyone who posted here is epitomizing exactly what is wrong with poker these days. Why it's not fun for amateurs anymore. Basically I guess it just boils down to you're kind of a bunch of assholes, pls stop.

Yep, all those people berating Vanessa on Twitter are bad for poker.

Yes, yes, they are.

Vanessa would never do anything like that WHILE ON TV, right?

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/twt/status/1014908798081818624

UH OH!!!

Poker pro Justin Pechie, who tends to be pretty level-headed and is pretty much the opposite of a troll, tried to reason with Vanessa:

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https://twitter.com/twt/status/1014913705732030464

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https://twitter.com/twt/status/1014964995304579072

Vanessa apparently thinks that because she berated people on TV 6 years ago, it's totally a different year and people should totally be nice to her on Twitter now. You know, as opposed to remembering her staggeringly bad sportsmanship and then seeing her make bad plays herself, and deciding to say something.

Then a guy named Fernando Medina decided to bring up that Vanessa constantly spreads hate about others on social media, in relation to their political views.

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https://twitter.com/twt/status/1014971608426078209

In response, Vanessa let us know that not everyone deserves to have free speech, and the "platform" to give opinions should only belong to people who don't watch Fox News.

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https://twitter.com/twt/status/1014972843484827648

Keep in mind that Vanessa is a licensed attorney who supposedly specialized in civil liberties. Huh???


Then Ray Henson could stay silent no longer. Apparently Ray's fiancee -- a poker amateur -- was nervous, and he convinced her to play the Ladies Event. Vanessa berated this woman, as well. Was this in 2012, when Vanessa was young and dumb? According to Ray, it was in the ancient year of 2016:

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https://twitter.com/twt/status/1014998657890996224

Of course, Vanessa had to make excuses, claiming she was just "discussing hands" and didn't realize she was making anyone uncomfortable.

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https://twitter.com/twt/status/1015011323829075973

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https://twitter.com/twt/status/1015012599853809667

Ray wasn't having it.

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https://twitter.com/twt/status/1015015072710647809

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https://twitter.com/twt/status/1015015343918465024

Owned.

Vanessa didn't continue responding to Ray (big shocker).


Grab your popcorn and keep reading...

[Dan Druff]

A guy named Ryan Franklin showed up and was yet another person to point out that Vanessa is a huge hypocrite for complaining about people criticizing her play:

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https://twitter.com/twt/status/1014885759399034880

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https://twitter.com/twt/status/1014957869509193728

Was Ryan referring to that incident with Varkonyi, eight years ago? Not exactly.

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https://twitter.com/twt/status/1014959495372423168

He was referring to HIMSELF! One year ago! LOL!!!

Owned again!

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https://twitter.com/twt/status/1014960439061504000

I mean, there's so much more, but I'll just stop now.

Her lack of self-awareness is just amazing sometimes.

Vanessa really is the social media gift that keeps on giving.

[mulva]

obv 2019 dead pool candidate.

[BeerAndPoker]

It's J8o guys why is her play surprising?

At least it's better then J7 but she was suited here.

[snake_in_the_ass]

I try not to root for people to die but this world would be much better off without that cunt. What a miserable human being. If anyone is bored, call Bridgewater Associates and ask H.R. to look at her lovely tweets and ask them if Vanessa is the type of person they want working for them.