Mar 17, 2009 – Gorgeous, brilliant, and amazingly talented Team PokerStars Pro, Vanessa Rousso, is on a roll so far in 2009—and she’s coming home (to Florida) to celebrate. In February, Rousso was featured in a two-page spread in the highly anticipated Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. On March 6th, Rousso joined female racecar icon, Danica Patrick, as the newest spokeswoman for the domain registrar/web hosting giant, GoDaddy.com. Just three days after becoming the latest ‘GoDaddy Girl,’ Rousso became the first female to make the finals of the prestigious NBC National Heads Up Poker Championship. Rousso overcame one of the most difficult brackets in the tournament’s history to finish in second place, raking in $250,000. Now, Rousso is coming home to celebrate—taking a well-deserved break from the pro poker tournament circuit, and turning her attention to several appearances around her home state. Her tour of the Sunshine State includes the following:
• Rousso kicks off her Florida tour on Friday, March 20th at the Jacksonville Orange Park Kennel Club, where she will play in a charity tournament for her newly launched anti-poverty foundation, The No Limit, No Profit Initiative (http://www.nolimitnoprofit.org), as well as several other charities.
• Saturday, March 21st at the Jacksonville Orange Park Kennel Club, Rousso returns for a short lecture on Game Theory and Poker tournament techniques. She will also play in an invitation-only tournament.
• Monday, March 23rd, Rousso will participate in the Pompano Beach’s Isle Casino ‘Battle at the Beach’ $300K guaranteed tournament. She will be available to sign autographs and take photographs during the tournament’s scheduled breaks.
• Saturday, March 28th at the Palm Beach Kennel Club, Rousso will give a short lecture on Game Theory and Poker and play in an invitation-only tournament.
• Sunday, April 5th at the Isle Casino in Pompano Beach, Rousso will launch her innovative poker instructional camp: ‘The Art of Poker—An Intro to Game Theory and Poker.’ For details, or to register, visit the Big Slick Boot Camp website at http://www.BigSlickBootCamp.com.
• Saturday, April 11th at the Jacksonville Orange Park Kennel Club, Vanessa will teach another session of ‘The Art of Poker—An Intro to Game Theory and Poker.’
• Sunday, April 26th at the Palm Beach Kennel Club, Rousso will close out her Florida tour with one final opportunity for Florida poker players to attend her out-of-the-box boot camp, ‘The Art of Poker—An Intro to Game Theory and Poker.’
Rousso’s road to poker stardom began shortly after she graduated from Wellington High School as valedictorian of her class in 2001. Receiving a full scholarship to Duke University, she graduated with a four-year degree in just 2 1/2 years. While at Duke, she vigorously pursued the study of ‘strategic decision-making’—taking every available course on Game Theory. Eventually, this led to Vanessa’s curiosity about the game of poker and she began to analyze the strategic elements of the game. While studying at the University of Miami School of Law (on another full scholarship) her amateur poker ranking soon accelerated to that of world class professional when she placed seventh (for over $260,000) in the World Poker Tour World Championships at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. The blonde poker whiz from Florida caught the attention of online poker site, PokerStars, with whom she landed a lucrative sponsorship deal in 2006.
Since then, Vanessa’s success as a renowned international poker player has sky rocketed—she now has over $2M in tournament winnings. In keeping with her academic roots, when she isn’t playing poker, Rousso says that her passion is teaching poker strategy. Rousso recently teamed up with Big Slick Boot Camp LLC, to present a series of instructional workshops grounded in ‘Game Theory’ and Sun Tzu’s teachings about The Art of War (see schedule of events above or at www.bigslickbootcamp.com). This 26 year-old poker phenomenon from Hobe Sound, Florida has a unique combination of talent, beauty and brains—Vanessa Rousso is the ‘total package’ and now she is coming to a poker room near you.
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About Big Slick Boot Camp LLC: Big Slick has teamed up with esteemed poker pro Vanessa Rousso (over $2M in poker tournament winnings) to offer an out-of-the-box series of poker instructional boot camps titled, ‘The Art of Poker,’ where participants will learn poker strategy and have an opportunity to interact with Vanessa first hand. For more information, please visit http://www.bigslickbootcamp.com.
