Top Female Poker Players

Female poker players have long since proved they can mix it with the best of the men in the game, but just how good are the best of the women? Let’s look at the 5 top female poker players leading the all-time money list, plus my wild-card, and dissect their biographies to see how they equate in the overall world of female (and male) poker greatness.

1. Vanessa Selbst

There really can’t be anyone else topping this list, given Selbst’s superlative and consistent form on the green felt over the last decade.

Total Earnings

The 31-year old NewYorker has won well over $11million in tournament play ($ 11,645,266 to be exact at last count) and is sitting in 22nd spot on the overall lifetime earnings league, ahead of stars such as Gus Hansen, Allen Cunningham, Freddie Deeb and a host of others.

You just know someone is extremely good when they win a $100K Super High Roller Celebrity Shoot-out in Las Vegas, taking down $1,000,000 in this year’s event– and can boast it’s only their 3rd biggest payday!

Boasting of her achievements really isn’t something Selbst is guilty of though, despite having a career chock-full of them. She became the first – and to date the only– female to win 3 WSOP bracelets in open fields when she lifted the $25k Mixed Max event last summer, which added to her bracelets in the PLO $1500 and 10-game mixed $2500 events in 2008 and 2012 respectively.

It’s difficult to say just how much higher in the game Selbst could be just now if she hadn’t decided to take time off from her poker career to gain her Law degree from Yale Law School, graduating in 2012, but it’s clear that her ability at all versions of poker is world-class.

Biggest payday

Selbst pocketed $1,823,430 for taking down the Partouche Poker Tour $7750 Main Event at the palm Beach Casino in Cannes, France back in 2010, ahead of the best European players of the day in a field of 743. Phil Laak was the next best American in 15th spot.

Likeability factor

There is very little to dislike about Selbst, who has no airs and graces about her unlike some of the big names in the game - although she did have a habit of getting grouchy every time someone looked her up with a less-than-huge hand, but that’s always a risk when you play as aggressively as Selbst does. Overall she has the respect of most poker fans for her obvious talent, hard-work and results.

Her charity work and interests see her mixing with people from all different backgrounds both in an out of poker, and the news of her 2013 marriage to Miranda Foster was spread across the wider poker world with barely a bad word said about the happy couple.

Peer reviews

This is often how you can judge how good a player really is; do her peers respect and/or fear her game? Well, when Jessie Sylvia reached the final table of the WSOP Main Event back in 2012, it was Vanessa Selbst he chose to coach and mentor him – his eventual 2nd place finish pulling in a ridiculous $5,295,000.

As writer and poker player Shawnee Barton pointed out a few months later in a piece she penned on the female superstar of poker:

There are very few top players who ‘enjoy’ having Selbst at their table in a competitive sense – there are far easier opponents available than New York’s finest!

2. Kathy Liebert

Liebert has been around the poker scene for a long time, over 20 years as a professional since starting out as a prop player in Colorado, and holds a WSOP gold bracelet in Limit Hold’em gained back in 2004.

Total Earnings

With life-time tournament winnings of $ 5,983,412, 48-year old Nashvile-born Kathleen ‘Kathy’ Liebert has every right to her 2nd spot amongst female poker pros, consistently playing and winning among the best of the men among whom she ranked 31st at the height of her powers.

With her first 6-figure win coming in 1997 at the WSOP $3k NLHE and her last in 2009 at the WPT Bay 101Shooting stars event in San Jose, Liebert proved remarkably consistent over more than a decade of top-flight tournament poker, including 6 WPT final tables.

Outside of the game itself, she has used her business degree and financial acumen as a business analyst in her pre-poker days - coupled with her poker earnings - to invest in the stock market, although she still competes regularly on the US poker circuit.

Biggest payday

In 2002 Kathy Liebert became the first female poker player to ‘win’ a $1million prize when she took down the Party Poker Million event on the CardPlayerCruise, finishing ahead of the likes of Phil Hellmuth Jnr, Chris Ferguson and Mel Judah, although the deal she cut when down to the last 3 cut the actual figure she received. Still a massive achievement.

Likeability factor

That was how she was described on the WPT BootCamp pages, and this seems as good a description as any for the like-able Tennessee-an.

Unlike many other pros, male and female alike, there seem to be no nasty rumours doing the rounds, no derogatory internet threads and generally nothing but nice words about Liebert – in itself something of an achievement in poker!

Peer reviews

That pretty much sums up how the rest of the professional poker fraternity feels about Liebert.

3. Annie Duke

Annie Duke is the kind of poker player about whom entire books could be written, and not all of them would be favourable to say the least when it comes to this hugely controversial poker star.

One which has been written and is favourable, naturally, is her 2005 autobiography “Annie Duke: How I raised, folded, bluffed, flirted, cursed and won millions at the World Series of Poker”.

Total Earnings

Although pretty much inactive on the poker scene for the last 5 years, Duke has amassed $ 4,270,548 in tournament earnings since her poker career began back in 1994, first coming to prominence at the WSOP that year after her brother, Howard Lederer, persuaded her to come out to Las Vegas and play some events.

Her first significant 6-figure win arrived at the WSOP in 2009 when she lifted $110,000 for 2nd place in the $5k Limit Hold’em event, and a string of consistent cashes marked her out as one of the best females in poker during the early part of the noughties, which included lifting the WPT $2.5k title at the 2004 Bellagio 5-Star WPT Classic.

Her biggest win of ‘recent’ years came when she took down the NBC National heads-Up title in 2010, for $500,000 - but subsequent events (of which more below) have seen her absent from the tournament circuit pretty much since.

Biggest payday

Without a doubt this was Duke’s victory at the WSOP Tournament of Champions event back on 2004, when she defeated a host of the world’s top players, including Phil Hellmuth heads-up, to scoop $2,000,000 and the coveted title. Her thoughts about this event can be read in this recent article here where Duke discusses the problems she faced as a female in the male-dominated world of poker.

Likeability factor

Now, this could be akin to shooting fish in a barrel, but it needs to be addressed in any article which hopes to reflect Duke’s career accurately. The woman is simply the most-hated figure in poker – not only ‘female poker’.

Harsh words, but any 2–minute internet search will have you learning expletives you never knew existed, all of them aimed at the character of Duke and the scandals surrounding her various poker dealings.

Duke’s involvement (or not) in the Ultimate Bet super-user scandal of 2008, the repercussions of which ran and ran for years, marked her out as a target of abuse. Russ Hamilton, the owner of UB, pointed out that Duke was aware of (the ‘God-mode’, which allowed anyone using it to view everyone else’s hole cards) and even used the software herself on a 15-minute delay. Duke denied such an occurrence, stating:

Very few poker fans found Duke’s response believable, and her behaviour has been extremely questionable on many other occasions, including the failed Epic Poker League, which the BankRollMob describe thus:

Other public accusations which have seen Dyke at the centre of include being the real player behind her then boyfriend’s Million Dollar Guarantee success and her brother Howard Lederer’s involvement in the Full Tilt Poker debacle. None of these have endeared Annie Duke to the poker–playing masses, particularly owing to the vast sums of money lost by those who were affected.

Peer reviews

Although Duke’s playing skill undisputed – she is clearly a talented poker pro – she most certainly isn’t on the Christmas Card list of many of her fellow pros, the most obvious being Daniel Negreanu.

A very public spat between Negreanu and Lederer (defending his sister’s corner) ran for years online.

Negreanu, generally one of the more laid-back and least aggressive players (off the table at least) was moved to variously describe Duke as “Annie Puke”, “disgusting”, an “angle-shooter” and, among many more epithets, allegedly referred to her as a “c***” in an interview with PokerPlayer.co.uk in 2010.

Although she has some supporters among her peers, they tend to be part of her ‘old-school, brother’s crew’ with very few beyond those having anything positive to say about her ‘non-poker’ activities or personality.

4. Annette Obrestad

The Norwegian poker sensation burst onto the scene mid-2000 and captivated the poker world with her aggressive style and ridiculous youthfulness. Having played online as a 15–year old – hence the Annette_15 moniker – Obrestad would find herself higher up the list if online earnings were added to her live tournament cashes (but they’re not!)

Total Earnings

Obrestad’s total live tournament earnings amount to a very tasty $ 3,920,796 since she left the confines of the virtual felt, where she had already totaled hundreds of $1000’s on PokerStars, FullTilt and various other sites, despite never having ever deposited money of her own –free-rolls providing her with the initial bank-roll which she would quickly grow to huge proportions.

Her rapid transition to live tournaments saw her chalk up a huge victory in the late summer of 2007 (see below) followed by another big payday ($429,181) with her 2nd place at the Dublin EPT Main Event just a month later.

It then took the wunderkind a couple of years to fully stake her place in the big events, but by 2009 she was taking down 6-figure sums at the likes of the EPT Monte Carlo Grand Final, the following year’s Aussie Millions Main Event and the EPT/UKIP Heads-Up in London that year.

Although relatively quiet of late, Obrestad has proven herself to be one of the very best female players of the modern era and a match for the best males in the game.

Biggest payday

Annette Obrestad’s introduction to the world of live tournament play was meteoric, taking down the $2,013,733 first prize at the inaugural WSOP Europe in 2007 one day before her 19th birthday. This massive victory landed her the biggest single prize ever won by a female poker player, edging out Annie Duke’s $2million win noted above.

As pointed out at the time, the event’s tagline was "Who will be the King of Europe?" which needed rapidly changing to Queen of Europe when Obrestad topped the field.

Likeability factor

On a personal level Obrestad comes across as a very likeable young woman, although her early live career saw her described as:

Other people say this could be:

One other event which may have affected her ‘likeability-factor’ saw her continuing to represent and promote Lock Poker – her sponsors – despite the knowledge that the company was in serious financial difficulty in meeting its players withdrawal requests.

Peer reviews

There is almost nobody in the poker world who would denigrate Annette Obrestad’s poker prowess, and her fellow pro’s know exactly how talented this young player is. The legendary tale of her winning a 180-player SNG looking at her cards only once during the entire tournament speaks volumes as to how good she is at the game – and her fellow pros know this.

5. Vanessa Rousso

Known as ‘Lady Maverick’ within the poker world, Vanessa Rousso holds dual- US/French citizenship and is almost as famous away from the poker table now as she is on it, having appeared in Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition back in 2009 and more recently in reality TV show Celebrity Big Brother in the US.

Total Earnings

Rousso’s poker tournament earnings on the live scene have broken through the $3.5 million mark ($ 3,530,831 to be precise) in her 10 years as a pro. A quiet rookie season was followed by her first big payday – 7th place and $263,625 – at the 2006 WPT $25k NLHE event in Las Vegas, and launched the 32-year old New Yorker into poker’s big-time.

She followed this with several final tables in big events over the next few years, notably winning the $5k Borgata Poker Open for another $285,450 that same year and went on to win seasons 3 and 5 of the Poker After Dark series.

She was also part of the 2007 PPA (Poker Players Alliance) lobby against the UIGEA Act, an act which decimated online poker in the US. In 2009 Rousso spoke out in favour of relaxing the Florida ‘poker laws’ (which capped buy-ins and bets) which she felt went against the more skilful aspects of the game, stating that:

Back on the table, her most recent big cash-out came in the 2011 EPT/UKIPT in London, taking down $ 222,413 for her 2nd place finish. Since the end of 2011, however, her live poker tournament play and success has been extremely limited.

Biggest payday

Re-winding to 2009, Rousso took down the extremely tough $25k European High Roller Championship at the EPT5 Grand Final in Monte Carlo, scooping $ 700,160 when she saw off final table challenges from the likes of Anthony ‘Tony G’ Guogas and England’s Andrew Feldman. This massive victory cemented her place in the top league of female poker pros, although she was unable to reproduce quite the same level of result again.

Likeability

Well, I guess this comes down to how you feel about why successful and beautiful women get sponsored. She raised some hackles on the 2+2 forum when she defended herself against attacks by posters on the …2+2 forum! Some there had taken to ridiculing her looks and poker ability, saying her PokerStars sponsorship deal was only based on her ‘sexy’ looks – having appeared in an SI swimwear editorial where little was left to the imagination.

One of the more printable posts reads:

As Rousso pointed out in retort, though:

Her appearance on US reality TV show Big Brother this year also worked both ways for Rousso. Her strategies worked in that she finished 3rd, but along the way she made plenty of enemies by her ‘back-stabbing’ approach to the game-show. Her marriage and divorce to fellow Team PokersStars Pro Chad Brown, and her subsequent engagement to long-term girlfriend Melissa Ouellet, have both led to her ‘likeability factor’ being somewhat hit-or-miss. Her PokerStars deal ended early this year.

Peer reviews

Anyone, male or female, who has managed to defeat the likes of Doyle Brunson, Phil Ivey, Paul Wasicka, Daniel Negreanu, and Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier heads-up to reach a final against Huck Seed, as Rousso did at the National Championships in Las Vegas in 2009, is unlikely to receive derogatory comments on her play from fellow pros, regardless of what the masses might think of her on poker forums.

6. Jennifer Harman

It would be ridiculous to miss out Jennifer Harman from this list based on her focus on cash games rather than the tournament earnings everyone else is ranked by, so I will include her as my wild-card entry into the all-time greatest female players!

Total Earnings

50-year old Harman is a legend of the poker world, her $2,707,477 in live tournament earnings being a mere scratch on the surface of the wealth this woman has accrued over the years. Preferring the high-stakes cash games to tournament play, Harman is a long-time member of the ‘Big Game’ in Bellagio’s Bobby’s room, where the biggest names in the world regularly play $1000/2000 blinds -and sometimes higher! - poker.

That Harman claims to have never been staked in such a nose-bleed level of game speaks volumes about her skill – and likely earnings – from these games.

On the tournament scene, the Reno-native first hit a 6-figure payday at the 2000 WSOP, taking down 1st place in the $5k No Limit Deuce to Seven Draw for $146,250, which gave her the first of 2 WSOP bracelets –the second coming a couple of years later when she lifted the title in the $5k Limit event.

The WSOP continued to be a happy hunting ground, and almost $1million of her career earnings have come from the annual biggie in Las Vegas. A hiatus caused by her continuing kidney problems (a genetic problem which saw Harman losing her mother and sister when the 6-time nominated Hall of Famer was still a teenager) ensued, although she still managed to be part of the consortium which was put together to accept Texan businessman Andy Beal’s massive poker bet (read about it in the fascinating book “The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time.”)

That Harman could even be part of this huge game also highlights the money she must have won from the biggest cash games – as Mike Sexton wrote back in 2008:

Biggest payday

Harman’s top cash-out in tournament play of $ 383,840 – for 2nd place in the 2005 Rio Poker Festival $10k NLHE event – might seem small compared to some of the other big winners among the females of the game, but none of the others would be willing to place it all back down at a cash table the following night and expect to leave with it at least intact if not grown!

Likeability

On TV, Harman comes across as an extremely likeable lady, well-spoken and charming, and given her life story it would be excusable if she had harsh words or bitterness to share. It doesn’t seem to be the case however, and with the exception of allegedly being behind some of Daniel Negreanu’s attacks on Annie Duke (see above) it would be a rare thing to find a negative comment about Harman.

She also involves herself in a lot of charity work, and ‘helped pave the way’ for almost all other female players in the game today. Her one wish in life, should she be granted it?

This pretty much sums up Harman’s character away from the tables.

Peer reviews

In tournament play, Harman would be considered an extremely good and dangerous opponent; in cash play, she is considered to be among the very best in the world and has been so for over 15 years, hence being asked to be part of the ‘Consortium vs Beal’ mentioned above (Harman about broke even in her stint against the billionaire ‘maths expert’).