Vanessa Selbst Wins NAPT Mohegan Sun

Already a WSOP bracelet winner, Vanessa Selbst is now a NAPT champ too

Playing with a home field advantage yesterday, Vanessa Selbst took control of the final table at NAPT Mohegan Sun and secured the win.

Selbst, a Yale Law School student and coach at DeucesCracked.com, entered the eight-handed final table second in chips behind tournament grinder Mike Beasley of Hollywood, Fla. The two of them would end up meeting in the final heads-up match, though Selbst had a substantial lead with 18.8 million chips to Beasley’s 2.75 million. She finished him off within 30 minutes to take the title, sending Beasley home with the biggest score of his career, a healthy $428,000.

The NAPT title marks the third tournament Vanessa Selbst has won in Connecticut, where she has lived since beginning her schooling at Yale. She took down a preliminary event at the Foxwoods World Poker FInals in 2008 for $115,000 and then repeated her feat in 2009 for another $74,224. The NAPT Mohegan Sun win is worth significantly more money at $750,000, taking her total career live tournament earnings to more than $1.67 million.

After winning her first WSOP bracelet in 2008, Selbst told PokerListings.com that she saw her poker winnings as an opportunity to put her law education to good use by working for the causes she believes rather than seeking a big paycheck. If her track record in recent years is any indication, Selbst may only need a few more years on the tournament circuit to set herself up for life and get to work on changing the world pro bono.

There’s more poker yet to come at Mohegan Sun – the $25,000 High Roller Bounty Shootout begins today at noon EDT.