Final Table #126: Vanessa Rousso

Today on The Final Table, we continued our coverage of the 2011 World Series Of Poker at the Rio in Las Vegas at the end of its 5th week (with over $100,000,000 paid out in tournaments so far). We also discussed three big poker stories in the news:

• a hand played in Macau in which a player who was all-in refused to give up his $45,000 in chips to the other player;
• a lawsuit filed against Tobey Maguire and other celebrities who won money from a hedge fund embezzler in a high-stakes private cash game;
• the new federal online poker legislation proposed by Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX).

In our guest segment, we talked with Vanessa Rousso, who has racked up over $4 million in tournament earnings over the last few years. She explained what she'll be teaching at her Main Event Prep Camp at the Aria on July 7th, and shared some of that advice for free, including some basics for anyone who will be playing the WSOP Main Event for the first time next week. We also asked Vanessa to update us on how her husband (poker pro Chad Brown) is doing after his cancer scare earlier this year, and share her thoughts on the "hard stop" rule for WSOP tournaments. Then the three of us discussed a controversial hand from the new season of "The Big Game" (which you can only watch online, not on TV), in which Tony G blatantly angle-shoots against Phil Hellmuth in a big hand.

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We do The Final Table show every Tuesday 3pm to 4pm CT on 590 KFNS radio from the poker room of Harrah's St. Louis.

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Also on The Final Table:

• Vanessa Rousso announced her brand new iPhone App (Poker 1 On 1 With Vanessa Rousso), remembered her first experience at the WSOP (where she passed out and still made a deep run!), and offered some advice for playing sit-and-go qualifiers (6/9/10) 
• Vanessa Rousso offered more tournament tips before the first WSOPC tournament series in St. Louis (3/30/10) 
• Vanessa Rousso talked about her Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue photo shoot (2/18/09)
• Vanessa's husband Chad Brown joined us to talk about playing mixed games and how he transitioned from soap opera star to poker pro (5/18/10)