The Women's Information Exchange: Vanessa Rousso

Electra pages is a women's directory featuring top female poker professionals. As poker is the epitome of male chauvinism, this website is designed to help women realize their potential by showing example of top women players in this male dominated game.

Vanessa Rousso

Vanessa is one of the young rising poker stars coming from the online poker sphere.

Online poker has definitively revolutionized the centuries old game of poker in just one decade. Because if tremendously facilitates playing poker, eradicating the need to drive your car to find a casino and to wait for an available seat at your favorite game type. Thanks to online poker rooms, players from all over the world can play poker instantly, whenever they want to and for how long they want to, all from the comfort of their home.

This new poker paradigm has bred its new generation of poker players. Because it is so easy to play poker and to multi-table (up to 24 tables), a young twenty years old poker kid may have played as many hands as veteran poker pro Doyle Brunson, who is over seventy years old and has mostly played live poker. This overdose of poker creates ultra strong players in a short time, and very often they can annihilate the more traditional players who only play live poker. Vanessa Rousso is one of these new generation players, and she has been extremely successful at it, one of the best in the world.

Born in 1983 in White Plains, New York, Vanessa lived in France for the first ten years of her life, as her father is French. Her family came back to New York in 1993, and then they moved to Florida where Vanessa attended high school and graduated the valedictorian of a large class exceeding 900 students. From there the smart Vanessa Rousso obtained a full scholarship to join Duke University's undergraduate program, where she graduated with honors. In the end she went to University of Miami's law school, majoring in securities litigation.

Vanessa's academic background shows that she is a very intelligent young woman. She had been playing poker since the young age of five, but it is not until her summer break from law school that she started to take poker seriously. When she discovered that she loved the game of poker and that she was talented at it, she was hooked and there was no turning back.

Vanessa has a long list of poker successes. Here are a few of her best results. In 2007, she earned $700k during the World Championship of Online Poker No-Limit Texas Holdem Main Event organized by pokerstars, with a second place finish in the 2998-entrant field. Vanessa is an official poker pro at PokerStars Team, but this does not give her any unfair advantage in any pokerstars tournament. Available to all, the pokerstars marketing code provides a $600 bonus for all new players, and beyond that, skill is what differentiates the players.

In 2009 "National Heads-Up Poker Championship", Vanessa Rousso made it to the finals, finishing second to Chuck Seed and winning $200k. In May 2009, she prevailed against 79 players in the €25,000 EPT High Roller Championship, which had a prize of €720k.

She ended third at the $10k WPT No Limit Hold'em Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic in December 2010. Battling with a field of 438 players she succumbed to tournament winner Antonio Esfandiari when her all in move with Q2 was called with AQ, earning a nice $358,964.

Vanessa has 14 WSOP money finishes, 8 WPT money finishes including 2 final tables and 1 EPT finish. She has live tournament winnings in excess of $3,500,000. She is fourth on the Women's All Time Money List, behind Kathy Liebert, Annie Duke and Annette Obrestad.

Vanessa Rousso runs her own poker instructional camps in Monaco and South Florida under the sponsorship of Pokerstars. Some of these camps are reserved to women who want to learn from one of the strongest female players in poker. Some camps relate poker strategies with military strategy, using Sun Tzu's book, The Art of War as a reference.

In her spare time from playing poker, Vanessa Rousso has not been idle. She is also a gorgeous model and appeared on the cover page of Sports Illustrated Magazine. She acts as a spokeswoman for godaddy.com. Last but not least, she is also a poker advocate. In October 2007, Vanessa was part of a group of poker industry representatives of the "Poker Players Alliance" who tried to convince the United States Congress to repeal the 2006 "Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act".

Previously married to poker professional Dan Brown, they divorced in 2012. Vanessa Rousso is feared by most male poker opponents in both online and live poker setups. Vanessa is a leading example that women can be men's equal in their own turf, and even surpass them.

Other great female poker players:
Women poker players
Maria Ho
Annie Duke
Jennifer Harman
Annette Obrestad
Clonie Gowen