hmm,
If you have a latest version of maya ( think its only 2008)
you can select a neighbouring vert and pick walk to neighbouring verts using the arrow keys.

If not:

if you have two verts on top of each other and your selecting the wrong one you can shift marquee over the two and it will select the opposite one.

Or you can select a shared component of that verticey e.g. an edge it belongs to and then hold down ctrl and right click and convert the selection to vertices than ctrl click/ marquee to deselect unwanted components also selected.