She is the most successful poker player of all time. Now, she is helping a renowned and secretive hedge fund investor to develop winning strategies.
Successful poker players combine experience, instincts, discipline, and rapid-fire computing of probabilities. Vanessa Selbst embodies these traits: she dominated poker for more than ten years, and won the World Series of Poker three times. Her career prize take is estimated at $12 million – and she is only 33.
Selbst's mother put herself through college playing poker, so her talent is likely at least partly inherited. This year, Selbst left the world of professional poker, as she detailed in a Facebook post.
Instead, she began working at one of the most exquisite and controversial addresses for hedge funds: Connecticut-based Bridgewater Associates, founded by Ray Dalio in 1975. Selbst began working for the $160 billion hedge fund four months ago, «Bloomberg» reported, citing undisclosed sources.
The former card shark's new job is based in researching and developing profit-making trading strategies – not all that different than poker. «A bunch of nerdy kids collaborating to try to beat our opponents at a game. It’s also really freaking difficult…,» Selbst said. Bridgewater didn't comment on the new hire.
MIT Dropout
The millionaire poker talent has stellar qualifications, outside the playing tables: she graduated from Yale University with a degree in law, after abandoning studies at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The hire also casts the hedge fund industry in a casino light it normally prefers to avoid: the industry attracts a slew of math, physics and science graduates every year in order to refresh its trading strategies. Hedge funds are increasingly battling with tech giants like Google or Apple for talent.
Dalio, who handed over the operational responsibility for secretive Bridgewater last April after 42 years, has consistently beat the wider industry. His 1,500-strong work force has averaged a roughly 10 percent return every year – for the last 30 years.
