Vanessa Rousso
Vanessa Rousso has many talents; she graduated from Duke University in less than three years, had a stellar academic resume, and is fluent in three languages. She's a bit of an overachiever; she usually achieves her goals very quickly and her rise through poker's ranks proves just that. Rousso has been playing professionally for just under three years, but she has already made almost two million dollars in tournament play.
Rousso was born in New York in February of 1983. She lived in Paris, France until she was ten, when her mother and father divorced and her mother took her back to the US. She and her mother lived in Wellington, Florida, and Rousso was an overachiever in high school. She earned a scholarship to Duke University, where she minored in political science and majored in economics. Rousso soon found herself mesmerized by poker's psychological and mathematical aspects, and she finished her studies three semesters early. While making applications to law schools, she began playing online poker.
After she finished one year of law school, Rousso went to New Orleans to play in one of the WSOP's side events, finishing 7th. She took that as a good sign and went on to cash in the WSOP's summer event. She returned to law school that fall, but played poker every chance she got. Borrowing money from friends and family, she raised $25,000 to enter a WSOP tournament and ended up with a seventh-place, $250,000+ finish.
In the two years after that finish, Rousso had three World Poker Tour cash finishes and three WSOP cash finishes. She also earned her largest-ever cash in an online tournament, finishing second in a Pokerstars.net WCOOP event for over $700,000 under the name of "Lady Maverick". She appeared on several Poker After Dark episodes that year, winning $120,000. She also began entering PokerStars and EPT events, getting a tenth-place cash finish. When she's not traveling the poker tournament circuit, Vanessa lives with her husband Chad in Las Vegas.