Phil Ivey Truly In A World Of His Own

Phil Ivey is generally considered the best players in the game today. That’s hardly surprising when you consider he has amassed $16,669,716 in live tournament winnings since 1998, $551,234 of which has been added to that tally at this year’s WSOP.
As far as the ladies are concerned, Vanessa Selbst, 27, is currently in 2nd spot on the Women’s All Time Money List with $5,110,596 in career winnings since 2006. She has also cashed twice at WSOP 2012 for $182,019 including a 4th place finish at the $1,500 NL event.
So what happens when these superstars of the game meet up? Not very much, apparently, as according to an article on Card Player, Ivey only met Selbst for the very first time on Tuesday and later confessed to Daniel Negreanu to not even having heard of her .
For those wondering how Vanessa Selbst may have slipped past Phil Ivey’s radar all this time, Negreanu seemed happy to weigh in with an explanation and commented:
“He doesn’t have many friends in poker. He tries to stay away from all the gossip. He just wants to win.”
At least Brian Hastings can feel a bit more honoured that Phil Ivey recognized him while playing at the Omaha eight-or-better event last week. After all, Hastings is famous for being the man who took over $4 million from Isildur1 in one session at Full Tilt, and recently won a WSOP bracelet at the $10k NL Heads-Up Event. The only catch, though, is that Ivey kept referring to Brian Hastings as “Brian Madsen,” apparently mixing him up with Jeff Madsen, the 2006 World Series of Poker Player of the Year.
All the same, the poker community is well aware of Ivey’s idiosyncrasies, including his intense focus at the table, as well as his apparent aloofness. In fact, instead of being offended Brian Hastings said he found the situation “hilarious” and said it was “questionable” whether Ivey would remember him on the next occasion.
A few poker fans have suggested reasons for Ivey’s seeming obliviousness to the poker world, with one commenter suggesting Ivey suffers from prosopagnosia, also known a face blindness, in which a person has difficulty recognizing people’s facial features; “this may also account for his perceived aloofness as he really does NOT know who you are,” suggested the poster.
Another poster James16 had a different interpretation and concluded:
“I don’t think he means to be aloof. He just doesn’t feel the need to know every single players name or who’s won what tournament recently. He’s hardly going to be sitting with his laptop seeing who’s going to win the latest tournament then keeping track of that player. He know’s he’s the best, why bother to find out who Vanessa Selbst is, what difference would it make to his approach?”