Vanessa Rousso Net Worth, Bio, Poker Wins (October 2024)

(Featured image: courtesy of WPT)

It’s kinda hard to find someone who can do it all (well, almost). But Vanessa Rousso is living proof that you can do whatever you want if you work hard for it. She is a French-American professional poker player who enjoys venturing into several other activities outside the card game. She is a DJ and a TV celebrity at the same time.

For nine years during 2006-2015, she was a member of PokerStars (along with Daniel Negreanu, Vanessa Selbst, Igor Kurganov, and Liv Boeree) and was the ambassadress for GoDaddy.com for 4 years.

She is fond of live cash and tournaments and is reported to have accumulated tournament earnings of around $3.5 million. That doesn’t even include earnings from other ventures. This chick is really something.

Since she was born in the US, she has holds dual citizenship. Right now, she is currently residing in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Full Name: Vanessa Ashley Rousso
DOB: February 5, 1983
Birthplace: White Plains, New York
Profession: Professional poker player, DJ, TV personality, lawyer
Husband: Chad Brown (Divorced in 2012)
WSOP cashes: 18
Net Worth & Career Earnings: $4+ Million

Table of Contents

Vanessa Rousso Bio

Vanessa was born in White Plains, New York on February 5, 1983. However, her dad brought the entire family back to Paris because he wanted to see them grow in his hometown.

Because of this, she needed to apply for dual citizenship so she can go back and forth to France and the US. The good thing about this is that she also became fluent in both English and French.

But, when she was 9 years old, her parents decided to get divorced. As a result, she went to the States with her mom and lived in Florida with her grandparents. Until they were able to stand alone for themselves, they moved out of their grandparent’s house and started living on their own.

Lady Maverick has always been intelligent, even from a very young age. In fact, she graduated top of her class in high school, bagging the title of class valedictorian with an average GPA of 4.0. If you think she was all books and no play, you’re totally wrong. She participated in several extra-curricular activities and was still able to attain the highest grades.

Because of her excellent academic records in high school, she got a lot of scholarship offers for college. She chose to attend Duke University and took a major in Economics and a minor in Political Science.

But that’s not even the best part yet. You know how it normally takes 4 years to finish a bachelor’s degree right? She did it in 2.5 years only! It’s enough proof of how incredibly her mind works, which she very well uses when facing her poker opponents.

Lady Maverick Poker Career

Since she was good at academics, it’s hard to imagine that during high school, she was already playing online poker games.

She played a lot of games with the goal of building up her bankroll so that when she becomes of legal age, she’d be able to participate in live tournaments. And this is exactly what happened – just the way she planned it.

It was in 2005 when she won her first live tournament which is the No-limit Hold’em Summer Series. But this shouldn’t be attributed solely to luck. Rousso studied game theory at Duke University. She applied everything she learned which gave her an edge over her opponents.

Shortly after that, she also got 45th place during the $1000 Ladies No-limit Texas Hold’em event at WSOP. But of course, her career skyrocketed in 2006 when she was able to reach the final table and survived as the 5th placer in the WSOP Atlantic City No-limit Hold’em Circuit event.

In the same year, she decided to join the professional poker tour, and just after 6 short months, she was named among the top 80 people with the biggest tournament earnings during that time.

Vanessa also participated in the Big Game TV show representing PokerStars Team Pro.

It was a popular televised poker show in the early 2000s, hosted by Amanda Leatherman, which featured well-known celebrities like Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth, Scott Seiver, David Williams, Phil Laak, Antonio Esfandiari (just to name a few).

Personal Life

Vanessa and Chad met through poker as the latter is also a pro. Aside from being a pro, he is also an actor.

After dating for three years, they decided to tie the knot. Everyone in the poker community rooted for the power couple, but in 2012, Rousso announced their separation. Until now, no one really knows what made them part ways.

Aside from poker, she also is a lawyer by profession. And, she also does sports modelling from time to time. She also appeared in the 2015 season of Big Brother. This ultimately earned her celebrity status.