Vanessa Rousso is one of the biggest names in the sport of poker. If you play the game and don’t know who she is, your home games are probably played in a cave somewhere in Arkansas where the Hatfield/McCoy feud is the hot gossip, and folks are still waiting for news from the battle of Gettysburg. While she is on a bit of a break from traveling from one tournament to another, Ms. Rousso is giving poker players a rare opportunity. She is going to be giving away the secrets to her success during a series of one day poker camps that she is running in cooperation with Big Slick Boot Camp. Getting access to this mad genius of poker’s brain is an extraordinary opportunity for those who want to succeed in the game, and the camps focus goes well beyond the Xs and Os of the sport. Vanessa was kind enough to take the time to talk to us about her boot camp “The Art of Poker”, and explain what those who attend to can expect.
LaunchPoker: First of all, you had announced that you were taking a little break and spending some time back in Florida. So, you spend your breaks playing poker?
Vanessa Rousso: (laughs) This isn’t so much about playing poker, but more about coming home to Florida, which I really love to do, and also teaching. I love to teach. Teaching kind of renewed my enthusiasm for the game. It re-centers and grounds me into the strategic deceptions that I know are correct. Sometimes when you play too much, you kind of get off your best game because you get so zoomed into the poker life. And when I teach I kind of zoom back out and I remember some things that maybe I have forgotten in my recent games. So I like teaching for that reason. I also like to see people develop breakthroughs in their game. While I’m home, some of the casinos managed to convince me to play some tournaments during my appearance at their venues. So that just comes along with the territory.
LP: When you talk about teaching, you are referring to the “Art of Poker” class that you are offering in conjunction with “Big Slick Boot Camp.” So how did you get involved with this project?
VR: Well, I have been thinking about launching some sort of teaching company for a long time. It would give me more flexibility with the content that I teach and where I’ll teach, and to expand to some other locations that are different from maybe PokerStars events, where I teach at PokerStars boot camps, or some of the other places where the WPT boot camp teaches. I wanted to go to some more local style venues. It came up in conversations with some different people, and they were interested in being involved, so we launched it. In fact, my mom and stepdad are running the camps for me in Florida right now. It gives me the opportunity to work with my family, which is really cool, and then also with a lot of my friends who are internet poker players. I am using them as assistant instructors and they are helping me design some other unique curriculum.
LP: Whose idea was it to incorporate the principles from Sun Tzu’s book “The Art of War” into the curriculum?
VR: Oh yeah, that’s me; that’s typical me. I’m obsessed with the Art of War and Sun Tzu. It goes along with the whole idea of game theory and all that. I’m a big strategy buff. I’ve always loved riddles and puzzles and anything where you use logic and figure out the optimal play. The strategies that Sun Tzu espouses I find it to be so amazing because although it was written so long ago, his advice is really timeless and boundless. It’s extended for hundreds of years in truthfulness and beyond just war obviously. All of his points can be analogized to business and obviously to poker. It was a way to make the content a little more unique from other boot camps that are out there. So I wrote the curriculum based on that and based on the many times that I’ve read Sun Tzu, and I hope people like it. The game theory stuff I’ve taught a lot over the last few years and I just added the Art of War stuff to it. So it will be the first time I teach it on April 5th.
LP: I think people are going to love it. Which bit of the Art of War do you think best applies to the game of poker?
VR: There is none that is “best”. There are a couple tenants that I have centered my presentation around that I find are really germane to poker. Those are probably the parts where he talks about, and I’m not sure if I’m getting the quote exactly right, but something to the extent of “he who makes no calculation will never be victorious; he who sometimes makes calculations will sometimes find victory, and only those that make many calculations will find victory often.” Then he goes on to break down the factors that are involved in calculations, such as measurement, calculations, quantity, comparison, and then victory. Those all analogize to poker really well. First you need to measure and figure out what’s my chip stack? What are the blinds? How much does it cost a round? How many chips do my opponents have at the table? You need to measure and size up your opponent. Then you, of course, calculate. You calculate your pot odds, you calculate your average chip stack and how you are, relative to that. You calculate your average chip stack at the next level; calculate how much time is left in the level, and what sort of shape you will be in at the next level, and then so on and so forth. Then you compare your different alternatives and choose the best one. If you do analysis like that, you will be victorious far more often than if you ignore the calculations that are necessary in poker. That’s pretty much what forms the framework of how I use the Art of War in my presentation. Also there is a big chunk of it on “know thyself” and also “know thy opponent.” I tie that into my game theory information acquisition chapter, which I have taught at a ton of boot camps before. So Sun Tzu ties in well there as well.
LP: I know that these have just started, so how has the reception for the classes been, along with the other things on your “taking a break” plate?
VR: All I have given so far is the one mini boot camp. They loved that up in Jacksonville and there’s a lot of enthusiasm about the full day boot camp that is coming up, also the charity event went very well. I got fourth in the charity event and my fiancé, Chad Brown, won it, so that was cool. So Jacksonville went great; people were lined up around the corner. I’m on the cover of Ante Up this month and that’s a Florida based magazine, so everyone had those for me to autograph and everything. It was cool, it was really cool because I have a lot of local fans down here because I’m from Florida, and it was a lot of fun everything went really, really well. Of course there was the Isles event that I played, yesterday and today went well; I mean it would have been better if I hadn’t bubbled, but, ya know, still good times. From what I’ve heard from people, I think it seems like their pretty excited about the boot camp, so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
LP: If you do your job right, won’t you simply be training your own competition? I think Sun Tzu might get a chuckle out of that.
VR: I know, that’s funny, right? I guess I’ll probably pay for that in the long run, but I really like to teach, I do. Since poker can feel like such a selfish profession, this is the one part of it that’s more selfless. So I guess I’ll just take that into consideration, but I still like to teach so I’ll keep on doing it
LP: So how do people get in on your boot camp?
VR: They check out either 1 877-33-SLICK (1-877 337–5425) or they can go to www.bigslickbootcamp.com and register there. We take all credit cards and if they want to call the number we can probably work out something with a check as well. So that’s how they do it and if they have any questions they can either email bigslickbootcamp@yahoo.com or call the number. If this is something that people are interested in, seats are selling fast, so I recommend that people call in and reserve their spot.
Whenever we talk to Vanessa, we are either catching her at a break in a tournament or some other such inopportune moment. She has given up nourishment and sleep in order to give us some of her time, and in the case of this interview, we spoke to her while she was driving. We appreciate Ms. Rousso talking to us despite the fact that Florida is one of twenty states where the state police really frown on driving while talking on the phone. Of course had there been a problem, we would have happily paid the ticket.
