Vanessa Rousso Still Going Strong at WSOP Main Event

Gambling911.com favourite Vanessa Rousso was hovering around the 20 spot in terms of chip counts at this year’s World Series of Poker Main Event and, if any woman is going to be last standing (or sitting), Rousso might just be it.  She’s one of the best poker players of either sex and also one of the hottest, having appeared as a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model. 

Rousso has won just over $3 million in live tournament play to date.  Her biggest recent achievement was at the Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic/WPT Season 9 No Limit Hold’em Championship this past December, where she took home $358,964, finishing in third place.

Rousso is best known for winning the PokerStars EPT Monte Carlo – Season 5 No Limit Hold’em High Rollers in March of 2009 and the over $1 million cash that came with that achievement. 

She loves her No Limit Hold’em.

“It's not only my game of choice but it's pretty much my specialty,” she told Gambling911.com’s Jenny Woo.

Rousso obviously would love to be the first woman to win a World Series of Poker Main Event on US soil, but admits she’s….well…one of the boys.

“The thing is I've always been one of the ‘guys type’ of girl; all of my friends have been guys..  When I got to law school in Miami, the group of friends that I made were guys that liked to play poker.  I had learned how to play poker when I was a little kid.  My dad taught me how to play poker, backgammon and chess.”

After turning 21, Rousso didn’t run to the local bar and have her first drink of alcohol to celebrate “coming of age”.  Instead, she ran to the local bookstore.  

“I went to the bookstore and bought - no joke - $500 worth of poker books at Books-A-Million.  I read them all.  I love to read.  I poured through all the poker books at that time - The Sklansky's, ‘The Art of War and Poker’ - any book I could find.  I then had an idea of the basic strategy and started to apply it to the poker table.  I found that it was easy to be successful when your applying basic strategies in the everyday card room but I still had that competitive instinct that wanted to take it to the next level.”

In recent months, Ms. Rousso has had to deal with her boyfriend, poker pro Chad Brown’s, brush with cancer. 

We’re happy to say he is doing much better now.  Rousso will be involved in a poker charity to raise money for cancer research in the coming months. 

- Ace King, Gambling911.com