What does it take for a woman to win in a male-dominated sport?
Depends on who you ask. If you ask Vanessa Rousso, the new member of the
Go Daddy Girls®, she's likely to say an intimate knowledge of
Game Theory.
Vanessa became the first woman ever to reach the finals in NBC's 2009 National Heads-Up Poker
Championship. The 26-year-old law school student had to best some of poker's toughest players
to get to the final match at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Vanessa, who studied economics as an
undergraduate at Duke University, uses her training in Game Theory to win at the table.
Fellow Go Daddy Girl
Danica Patrick is likely to have
a different answer to the question of how to win in a sport dominated by men. Like Vanessa, Danica
became the first woman ever to win in her sport when she crossed the finish line first at the Indy
Japan 300 in April 2008.
In only three years, Vanessa has already earned over $1 million in live tournaments and another
$700,000 from a 2nd-place finish in the online PokerStars WCOOP Main Event. Her biggest live cash
to date came from the 2006 World Poker Tour World Championship, where she finished 7th for
$263,625. She also won $285,450 in a $5,000 Buy-in No Limit Hold'em tournament at the Borgata Open
that same year.
There is one other key to winning at poker: The right food. Ever since a big Indian dinner put
Vanessa to sleep during the World Series of Poker in 2006, Vanessa follows the same regimen at every
tournament: Breakfast of oatmeal, fruit, a hard-boiled egg, orange juice and coffee; protein bars
for lunch; a dinner of chicken salad; and fruit and a protein bar in the evening. She and fiancé,
poker pro Chad Brown, train for tournaments by lifting weights and doing cardiovascular exercises.
While the rising poker star will graduate from the University of Miami law school in 2009, she has no
plans to sit for the bar. "I play a game for a living," she says, "it doesn't get much better than that."
Vanessa joins Patrick and original Go Daddy Girl and WWE Wrestling Star
Candice Michelle as
superstar spokesmodels for GoDaddy.com.