‘The Lady Maverick’ Moves Into the Mainstream

A yellow Lamborghini Gellardo pulls up, and out of it appears one, and then another, stylish black stiletto. The blonde bombshell driving the exotic sports car worth six figures is wearing a tight leather jacket, blazoned with sponsor patches. She looks like she just stepped out of a Go Daddy commercial.

She’s young, she’s smart, and she’s beautiful, and if anyone knows how to capitalize on such marketable characteristics, it’s her — Vanessa Rousso.

The Team PokerStars pro has earned more the $3.2 million in tournaments over the last four years. More importantly, she has transcended the traditional confines of how a poker player can earn an income. The combination of her poker prowess, business savvy, and attractive looks and personality has landed her opportunities for mainstream attention, furthering her career outside the game as well as giving the general public a stereotype-breaking vision of a professional poker player. Rousso’s ventures away from the tables include a sponsorship from Go Daddy, an appearance in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, and numerous television deals.

Although she plays poker like she’s been doing it her entire life, Rousso’s journey to stardom began on quite a different path.

French Connection
Rousso was born in New York City in 1983, but moved to Paris with her family at the age of 3, where she would have most of her childhood memories. The oldest of three girls, she recalls learning poker as a child and competing with her sisters; of course, it was for fun and not money. When she was 10, her family relocated to the United States and settled in upstate New York, where Rousso attended middle school. The Roussos moved once more, to South Florida, where Vanessa and her sisters attended high school. This is where she developed her competitive spirit and flourished academically.

“One sister was a basketball player and was on the varsity team her freshman year, and the other sister was playing a lot of sports — softball, basketball. We all were on the swim team, and I played lacrosse. We grew up with a lot of sports, games, and competition, but my biggest activity in high school was the debate team,” she said.

Rousso competed in national debate tournaments, and was among the best in the country in policy debate. She competed in bracket-style, single-elimination tournaments, very similar to the setup of the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship, a competition in which she would make waves years later.
In high school, Rousso flew through assignments, tests, and advanced classes. In her senior year, she realized that she had a GPA that put her in contention for the prestigious valedictorian title. With that goal in mind, she posted straight A’s and finished at the top of her class.

College Bound
Rousso was awarded a full academic scholarship to Duke University. She studied economics and minored in political science, and developed an interest in game theory, a branch of applied mathematics relating to strategic decision-making for maximum return. She studied it because it was relevant to economics, but later would find that it gave her a huge leg up in poker. She started dabbling in online poker at the age of 19, but for the most part focused on school.

Rousso finished college in two-and-a-half years, breaking the school’s record. “I’m a big believer in efficiency. I don’t like wasting my time and energy. I want to do big things in my life,” she said. “School has always come pretty easily for me. Of course, exam time is always hard, but for the most part during the semester, it wasn’t very difficult for me.”

After graduating from Duke, Rousso was off to the University of Miami Law School. She had ambitions of becoming a securities litigator. Fascinated by Wall Street and the financial markets, she envisioned herself in the courtroom, representing clients. That was until poker took over.

Tournament Bug
While balancing a demanding class load, Rousso slowly began spending more time on poker. After turning 21, she became a regular at the Hard Rock Casino, playing sit-and-gos. Equipped with a natural mind for games and a background in game theory, she picked up sit-and-go strategy quickly, and easily transferred her poker skills to multitable tournaments, as well. She began cashing in major tournaments; her first was a seventh-place finish in a $200 buy-in no-limit hold’em tournament at the 2005 World Series of Poker Circuit event at Harrah’s New Orleans, for $6,000. Within about a year, she built a $40,000 bankroll and made a life-changing decision.

“In 2006, I decided that I wanted to play the big buy-in tournaments on the circuit,” she stated.

When Rousso sets goals, she sets big ones, and rightfully so. One tournament that she had in mind was the $25,000 buy-in World Poker Tour Championship. Wanting to be smart with her bankroll, Rousso sold shares of herself to her friends and family on a dollar-for-dollar basis for between $100 and $1,000 a share. She ended up selling $15,000 worth of shares, and used $10,000 of her own money to buy in.

“The reason I chose that event was because it had a really good structure. Everyone started with 50,000 in chips, and I thought it would give me the greatest opportunity to make some money. I also knew that it guaranteed to pay 100 people, and since the event expected to draw around 600, it was much better than the normal 10 percent payout.”

As always, the WPT Championship draws the best players in the world. Rousso waded through the field of 605 players who were vying for the $3.7 million first-place prize. She reached the final table of nine, and the first player to go out was Chad Brown, who is now her fiance.

“That’s when we met. I don’t know how people can be with a non-poker player if they are doing this full time, because that person would have to be a real trooper,” Rousso said with a laugh. “It takes a poker player to understand a poker player. Having Chad as a partner, and him having me, has definitely been a big advantage for both of us.”

Eventually, play reached seven-handed, and the remaining competitors were scratching and clawing to secure a spot at the televised WPT final table. James Van Alstyne, a Las Vegas pro, raised to 485,000, and Rousso looked down at the A K. She went all in for 1.475 million, and Van Alstyne called. He showed the A J. Rousso, 23 years old at the time, needed to dodge three jacks and diamonds, but on this particular hand, it wouldn’t happen. Van Alstyne turned a jack, and Rousso was eliminated on the television-table bubble.

After paying her investors their share of the $263,000 she’d won, Rousso added about $100,000 to her bankroll. Selling shares of herself to play in a $25,000 buy-in poker tournament closely resembled a Mel Gibson movie called Maverick, so a close relative dubbed her “Lady Maverick."

Five months later, she won a $5,000 buy-in no-limit hold’em event at the Borgata Open, for $285,000. Throughout this time, Rousso was still attending law school. At the end of 2006, she decided to take a break to focus solely on poker.

“I intend to go back and finish. I’m so close to my degree that it makes no sense not to,” she said.

In the 2007 PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker $2,500 main event, she finished third out of a field of 2,998 players. However, after some controversy, the eventual winner was disqualified. All players moved up one place, putting Rousso second, with a payday of $701,000.

She maintained her consistency throughout 2008 with multiple major live-tournament cashes, including another heartbreaking television-table bubble at the WPT Southern Poker Championship. Most recently, she made an incredible run in the 2009 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship against a few of poker’s biggest icons. In the first round, she defeated legend Doyle Brunson, and followed that up with wins over Phil Ivey, 2007 winner Paul Wasicka, Daniel Negreanu, and Bertrand Grospellier. She eventually lost to Huck Seed in the finals, but took home $250,000 for her efforts.

She made her biggest score to date in the PokerStars European Poker Tour Grand Final high-roller event, where she outlasted a hugely talented field of 79 players to win first-place prize money of almost $963,000.

Watch Out, World
With raw talent — and beauty, to boot — Rousso’s been working double time in weeding through the numerous sponsorship offers that she’s received. She’s a proud member of Team PokerStars Pro, and recently became a spokesperson for GoDaddy.com, appearing in a national commercial with racecar driver Danica Patrick.

“I feel a personal stake in promoting poker. I actually went and lobbied for the rights of online poker to Congress last October; that’s proof that I don’t just talk about it, I back it up. Also, growing up in a non-poker world to eventually be a lawyer or an investment banker, I was always going to be successful in an accepted career. I don’t like the fact that there are still people out there who don’t understand what I do for a living. They think it’s gambling or they think it’s seedy. I want to help change the face of my industry.”

While posting big tournament results is her favorite way to promote the game, she took advantage of plain ol’ good looks in the 2009 Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. Posing in a sporty, black, two-piece swimsuit, Rousso showed off a tan and six-pack abs, all while promoting PokerStars and poker to a national audience.

“Of course I was nervous; what girl wouldn’t be?” Rousso said with a laugh. “I worked really hard in the couple of months leading up to it, but then I went straight back to my poker-playing diet. I’m glad to say I was in that good of shape at least once in my life.”

Her latest venture involves a brand-new show on the E! channel called Bank of Hollywood. The show features a panel of celebrities who have the power to award money to real people. Contestants on the show may ask for any amount of money and for any reason, but it’s up to Rousso and the other judges, including Wilhelmina Models President Sean Patterson, Pussycat Dolls singer Melody Thornton, and Candy Spelling, to decide whether or not they receive it. The premiere episode will air on Dec. 14 at 10 p.m. EST/PST.

In addition to pushing poker further into the mainstream, she’s using poker to help charitable causes. She recently helped found the No Limit, No Profit Initiative, a charity that supports the research and programs of nonprofit organizations to decrease poverty around the world.

“What if we took just $1 from every buy-in of every tournament year-round? That would be millions of dollars that would go to help fight poverty.”

She’s as friendly as she is beautiful, and her poker accomplishments thus far have proven that she has the talent. Never one to settle, her goals are lofty ones, so it’s no surprise that in poker, it’s to be the best.

“I know that I still have a long way to go, but I’ve always had that drive. I want to be the best, and in poker, that could take a very, very long time. I’m sure that I’ll stay excited about poker for quite a while.”

With limitless ambition, an incredible work ethic, and a track record of getting what she wants, there’s no limit to what she can accomplish, both at and away from the tables.

How Game Theory Applies to Poker
Strategic decision-making is a vital part of poker, and Rousso says that game theory has helped her to understand concepts in a fairly short period of time that otherwise would have taken her years of play to understand.

One example that Rousso uses and also teaches in game-theory seminars is the RL Ratio, which is the preflop raise or limp ratio. While there is much focus on which cards to play preflop and from which positions, this focuses on how to play hands from different positions. In poker, it’s important to “mix up your play”; otherwise, opponents will catch on. But oftentimes, it’s difficult to know exactly how to do so. The RL Ratio is a framework for analyzing whether a player should favor raising or limping, taking into account variables such as six-handed play compared to nine-handed play, as well as stack sizes and position.

“When you mix it up, you know that you will sometimes limp and sometimes raise, but you’re going to favor one or the other, given the complex set of circumstances. The RL Ratio is just the ratio that I introduced as an example of how you can use ratios for expressing a mixed strategy.”

Rousso says that players favor a certain strategy or ratio according to their overall table image. Preferences of a hypothetical loose-passive player may be one raise for every four limps, because he favors limping 80 percent of the time, giving him a 1-4 RL Ratio, while a tight-aggressive player will likely raise four times for every limp, giving him a 4-1 RL Ratio. Rousso states that this will give players a logical way of looking at mixed strategy, which will in turn help them know how to change up their game.

“You take complex situations that involve human beings, which are very difficult to reduce to mathematics, but you attempt to do so by creating variables for human tendencies.”

The RL Ratio can be used in numerous ways involving strategy, and Rousso suggests increasing the ratio with later position. Teaching game theory is one of the many activities that Rousso currently has on her plate.