Vanessa Selbst isn't playing within the Americas Cup of Poker today. She's not a captain, she's not a coach, heck, she may not even know it's happening just paces clear of her expanding Main Event chip stack. Nonetheless she's had a big impact on today's proceedings.

Meet Astrid Silvana Periera Fernandez, America Marconi and Florella del Rasario Davila Reo. The trio are something of a primary on the Americas Cup in that they are the competition's only female players in history. And for considered one of them at least, it is all on account of that lady Selbst.

"She's the leader of the pack," Periera, essentially the most competent English speaker of the group, says of poker's all-time female money winner. "She's motivated such a lot of women to think 'yes I can', I as a lady can play poker and that i can succeed and do a fair job."

The Americas Cup's female contingent. From left to right: Marconi, Periera & Florella

Periera, a lawyer who grew up in Boston before returning to Chile three years ago, knows that today's job is to assist her country through to the Americas Cup final. Getting here wasn't easy -- she needed to beat greater than 1,000 Chileans across 68 tournaments to earn the points essential to play today's event -- but she's definitely profiting from her opportunity and finishing third on her table of six may have gone a way towards completing that job.

The $1,000 she's already won by collaborating is $513 bigger than her career-best poker score, and whatever happens over the following 36 hours or so, all that is an experience she'll clearly never forget.

"I'm loving it," she says during a break in Americas Cup action. "I'm taking picture of the entire Team PokerStars Pros I WILL BE ABLE TO find and i have been sending them back home."

Like many in paradise this week, Periera et al live the dream and people pictures will make an ideal addition to her busy blog, where she's sharing the experience with all her friends back home. Those experiences might include the time she met Daniel Negreanu and he told her unimpressed daughter that he is "el numero uno", or even the time Team Chile captain, Amos Ben, wrongly advised her to make use of "cojones" to get through today's tournament.

If her team wins this week's event and pockets $32,500, though, those experiences will most likely include a visit to this Sunday's $1,000 buy-in Women's Event.

Periera laying down the law in today's first round

"It's completely out of my bankroll, but that is what I NEED to do," says Periera, who goes by the screen name 'Silly2127' on PokerStars. "I'm glad I'm playing today with these guys, they're all wonderful. But fiddling with the most productive women within the planet, that'll be a dream come true."

There she might actually get to play against Selbst. Who knows, she might even beat her? You see, for Selbst that's arguably the one downside to cashing every tournament and motivating a complete gender: every once in a while, she might just get busted by the very people her success helped inspire.

Vanessa Selbst, someone to appear up to

Stay tuned to the PokerStars Blog for more from the Americas Cup and do not forget to click through to live updates, features and interviews from the $10,000,000 guaranteed PCA Main Event.Keir Mackay is a copywriter for PokerStars.

Read More... [Source: PokerStarsBlog.com :: Americas Cup]