Vanessa Rousso is having a pretty good year.  Less than two months after coming in second in the highly publicized NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship for a $250,000 score, this weekend Team PokerStars Pro Vanessa Rousso took down (arguably) an even more impressive event, the PokerStars.com 2009 European Poker Tour Grand Final High Roller- worth EUR720,000.  Add all that to the sponsorship deal, Rousso signed with GoDaddy.com right before the NHPC (one of only a handful of non-poker related major sponsorship agreements ever offered to a poker player) and yes it would be safe to say that 2009 has been pretty good for Vanessa Rousso.

Not exactly an easy group to get through either, some of the toughest players in the game made up the 79 person field of the EUR25,000 buy-in EPT Grand Final High Roller including pros like Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, John Juanda, Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier, Gus Hansen, Ivan Demidov, Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, Erik Seidel and Poppa PokerRoad Barry Greenstein.

Not surprisingly than, the final table of this event also held its share of tough opponents including William Thorson, David Steicke and "bad boy of poker" Tony G.  The runner-up in the event was Randy Dorfman, who came into heads-up play with the chip lead but after a tough match, was eventually forced to bow to Rousso and accept his half million dollar second place cash.

The final table finish positions for the 2009 European Poker Tour Monte Carlo Grand Final, were as follows:

1st.  Vanessa Rousso- EUR720,000

2nd.  Randy Dorfman- EUR434,000

3rd.  Tony G- EUR257,000

4th.  Florian Langmann- EUR188,000

5th.  David Eldar- EUR138,000

6th.  William Thorson- EUR99,000

7th.  Andrew Feldman- EUR79,000

8th.  David Steicke- EUR60,000

For more information on Rousso and the EPT High Roller event, visit the PokerStars blog (www.pokerstarsblog.com).


Story by Mark Anderson