Chad Brown may not be from America’s Gulf Coast, in fact, as a former Hollywood actor, he’s about as West Coast as you get, but that didn’t stop him from visiting Biloxi, a few miles from the epicenter of Poker’s birth, and dominating the tournament series. Yes, twice, Brown outright won an event, including the Main Event at the Gulf Coast Poker Championship.
Brown has been having a pretty good year, borderline great, and though he doesn’t get the respect he probably deserves because of the stigma of his previous profession and his marriage to fellow poker pro Vanessa Ruosso, he’s proven to be one of the better live tournament players in the world.
His early success was brushed off as an actor getting lucky, finding a passion in poker, and running good. Weird because many of the top players have fallen into poker as a profession after years of plying a different trade. Just because Brown’s history is viewable occassionally on Cinemax doesn’t make him any less a player.
His marriage to Vanessa Ruosso, a woman well versed in Game Theory (a la Chris ‘Jesus’ Ferguson) and holder of a Duke degree thereby considered a deep intellectual thinker, might have seemed an uneven union but as always that’s giving Brown short shrift.
Ruosso, one of the few pros to have a mainsteam sponsor, GoDaddy.com, to go with her online poker sponsorship also faces a similar misperception as her husband. She’s both a pretty face and an excellent poker player. Too much emphasis is given to the pretty face, and too little to her successes.
However, both players have had excellent years, and Brown last week went to the Gulf Coast Poker Championship and took down two events. Brown won the Main Event and the Pot Limit Omaha tournament. Brown is a crafty player who is an excellent reader of people and not afraid to act to draw out another bet.
At the Main Event final table he was giving out a false tell of weakness, and his opponent perhaps forgetting Brown’s a professional, and an actor, made a bad call because of it. He just looked weak, the beaten player mumbled to his railbirds.