Vanessa Rousso’s nickname “Lady Maverick” comes from the movie Maverick in which the hero raises $25,000 buy-in for the World Championships by selling $1,000 shares in himself.

Vanessa did the same and thus earned the nickname. Incidentally she paid back her investors ten fold.

But Vanessa has lived up to the image of being a maverick. She appeared in one Atlantic City tournament dressed in a hotel bathrobe, cowboy hat and boots. Vanessa reminisces, “The looks on peoples’ faces were priceless. They were like, ‘who is this girl and what is she doing’.” Vanessa went on to take a place on the final table, end up in fifth place and win $18,000.

However this was not a pre-planned stunt intended to distract the competition. In the world of poker pros such stunts do not work as later Cat Girl learnt when she made an entrance dressed in nothing but body paint. Actually Vanessa has overslept and had to choose between coming down in bathrobes and being late. Her poker brain told her that missing out rounds in a short event would be disastrous and hence the bathrobe. But usually she dresses in style and hence has earned a second nickname “Vanessa the Dresser” from Dave “Devilfish” Ulliott.

Away from the poker tables Vanessa is a maverick as well with multifarious interests that she lists on her MySpace page. This Law School graduate loves flying, dancing and all things connected with water. Her tastes in movies are on the sentimental side with American Beauty, Life is Beautiful and When Harry Met Sally being favorites. The Firm and Rounders are other movies listed as favorites and these reflect her education and her profession respectively. Her tastes in books are completely different with crime taking the center stage. Grisham and Dan Brown are her favorite writers.

Vanessa’s MySpace page also says that she is in a relationship and that is with Chad Brown, poker pro and the presenter of the Ultimate Challenge Poker television series. Brown is 15 years older than Vanessa but this does not seem to bother her. Despite having independent professional lives the two manage to find time together. But Chad was not the first poker player Vanessa has dated. That credit goes to Ross Romash, a Florida real-estate developer, who accompanied Vanessa to the Harrah’s New Orleans Poker Challenge WSOP Circuit event in 2005.

Both made the final table and as bad luck would have it both got eliminated on the same hand. But that tournament gave a perfect start to a wonderful career. This was Vanessa’s first major tournament in which she became the youngest woman to reach the final table in a WSOP Circuit event.

Playing in the $200 No-Limit Hold'em tournament, both Rousso and Romash made the final table before being eliminated on the same hand. Rousso had more chips before the hand and so logged the higher finish, taking down $6,465 in her first major tournament, in the process becoming the youngest woman ever to make the final table in a WSOP Circuit event.