Vanessa Rousso Joins "Big Slick Boot Camp" Tour

Vanessa was featured in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition in February, recently became the first female to make the finals of the NBC National Heads Up Poker Championship and starred in the latest GoDaddy commercial. Now she joins Big Slick Boot Camp and is doing a tour in California teaching anyone who is willing to put up $400. Big Slick Boot Camp promises you will learn "poker strategies and techniques based on the concept of Game Theory" in a one day course. I would never pay that for a one day class but it would be a nice experience meeting some poker pros and getting some autographs and pictures.

My biggest passion outside of playing poker is in teaching poker strategy. I love watching that light bulb go off in my students' minds when they discover something new, said Vanessa.

Rousso is engaged to poker player and commentator Chad Brown. Chad is 47 years old, Vanessa is 26 years old. I guess woman like older guys but Rousso did say "Well, behind Chad I will have to go with Patrik Antonius. He is very handsome--and his wife is drop dead gorgeous. When their baby grows up, they'll probably use it to start some kind of superior race."

Vanessa Rousso's Bio
A French-American dual citizen born in New York, Vanessa Rousso studied at Duke University, where she graduated with honours on full scholarship. She then went to law school in Miami with hopes of becoming a securities litigator. That was until she discovered poker.

During her time at Duke, Vanessa became interested in Game Theory, which teaches how to apply complex math-based decision making strategies to everyday life. Couple that knowledge together with a lifelong love of games and it seems a natural fit that she would wind up as a poker player. Vanessa began making an impact on the live tournament circuit in 2005, developing her skills with several impressive results. A year later, she made the final table of the WPT Championship event, finishing 7th and taking home over $250,000. In the same year, Vanessa also became the youngest ever female player at the time to reach a World Series final table, with an 8th place finish in the $5,000 Shorthanded Hold’em event. This was followed by victory in a preliminary event at the WPT Borgata Poker Open, where Vanessa beat a field of 173 to win first place prize money of $285,450.

Amazingly, her most significant cash finish has been online. In October 2007, she finished 2nd in the main event of the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker. Vanessa walked away with over $700,000, one of the biggest cash prizes in the history of online poker. Vanessa RoussoIn March 2009 Vanessa added another big result to her varied resume, this time in the discipline of heads-up poker. At the star-studded NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship, Vanessa played through a field of 64 of the world's best players to reach the final, where she placed second for a cash of $250,000.

When Vanessa isn’t playing, she somehow manages to find time for many hobbies. Describing herself as something of an adrenaline junkie, she regularly goes skydiving and bungee jumping. Vanessa has also contributed strategy articles to several poker magazines.

With sizeable winnings both live and online, there are surely many more titles on the horizon for Vanessa. She is a member of Team PokerStars Pro and can be found playing in the biggest tournaments, using the screen name ‘LadyMaverick’.