Vanessa Rousso
If you’ve played in the online poker room PokerStars, then you would be familiar with the player called Lady Maverick. This player is slick and careful, and yet she is aggressive enough to win tournaments and be one of the leading female poker players in the world of professional poker. In the live world, Lady Maverick is the stunning Vanessa Rousso, whose bankroll is equally as eye-catching and jaw-dropping as her looks. With three first-place finishes, thirty-one money finishes and over $2.3 million in the bank, you know that Vanessa Rousso is not just another pretty face in the world of poker.
She never was just another pretty face, both in the poker world and out. She started her life as an overachiever, an honor student who was also busy with many sports activities as well as social and leadership activities under her belt. She was also a musician, playing the violin in her younger years, as well as an activist, volunteering in the movement of Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. She was very active in the honor society as well as in the French society. She was a dean’s lister in college when she went to the Ivy-League school Duke University, and she graduated with a major in economics in 2003. She then went to law school at the University of Miami, but she did not finish pursuing her JD in law. Instead, she became a professional poker player.
She began playing poker during her stay in Duke, and she studied game theory to be able to improve her game significantly. She would paritcipate in online poker games, wherein her age would not be so much of an issue, and she practised her techniques and her skills there. She entered the professional poker tournament scene in 2005, when she joined a World Series of Poker Circuit Event and finished 7th, taking home $6,465. Her first big win came the year after though, at the Five-Star World Poker Classic, which was part of the fourth season of the World Poker Tour Championship. She took home over $260,000 for finishing seventh as well. Her biggest win so far was at the European Poker Tour Monte Carlo Grand Final in May 2009, where she took home over a million dollars for finishing first. She has a long way to go in her career, and more money to win.