The founder of the PokerBabes website, Shirley Rosario, has earned the biggest score of her live tourney career, after final tabling Event 10 at the WSOP, a $10,000 Limit Omaha Hi/Lo event.
Her cash in the Omaha event was good for $146,522 and the field included a lot of the top pros including Vanessa Selbst (who has already claimed a bracelet in the 2014 WSOP in Event 5), Phil Galfond, Phil Laak, and Erik Seidel.
The final hand took place during Level 26. With play four-handed, Richard Ashby raised from the cutoff, Shirley Rosario responded by moving all-in from the big blind and Ashby made the call. When both players showed their hole cards, Ashby revealed Ac-Kh-9s-8h and Rosario showed 8d-7c-4h-2c. The runout on the board came 7h-3h-10c-3d-2h, meaning that Ashby rivered a flush to beat Rosario’s two pair, and he had a slightly better low hand to scoop the pot.
While the Poker Babes founder has definitely encouraged a lot more females to take up this great game, Rosario’s fourth place finish in such a tough competition and prestigious event that is the World Series of Poker, will definitely do a lot to demonstrate just how successful women can be at poker, which for the most part is still a largely male-dominated world. WSOP Event #10 also saw another lady run deep in the tournament with Melissa Burr getting an eighth place finish, which was good for $51,768.
Previous to this big tournament score, Rosario has been playing in live poker tournaments in and around the California area. She considers Omaha Hi/Lo to be her best game and this recent result would prove that. Early on in her poker career she tasted success at the Legends of Poker in Los Angeles, a $550 Omaha Hi/Lo event for $31,000. As she told a PokerListings reporter, “It’s the first game I ever learned, it’s the game that I’ve studied the most.”
It was thirteen years ago that Shirley Rosario began playing the game. She was first introduced to Omaha Hi/Lo when she was a casino cocktail waitress, serving drinks at the Commerce Casino in Los Angeles. She then began working as a prop poker player at the Bicycle Casino for two years which helped her to further develop her skills across several different variants of poker including Omaha Hi/Lo.
According to an interview reported on PokerListings, Rosario said, “One of the players kind of took me under his wing and then taught me.” That poker player she was referring to was Steve Badger, a player who had a number of victories in Omaha events at the WSOP during the 90s and 2000s.
When asked by PokerNews what advice she would give to new aspiring poker players, Rosario said, “I would give them same advice that Steve gave me all those years ago: Play hands that coordinate well together and play hands that have the potential to scoop the pot.”
Besides Omaha Hi/Lo she also regularly plays No Limit Hold’em and mixed events like H.O.R.S.E., where she has also had some success in, placing first in a number of H.O.R.S.E. events at the Commerce Casino from 2009 to 2011.
The Poker-Babes.com website she developed from the ground up was eventually sold to PokerStars in 2010, although she continues to be the face of the site. Rosario contributes her poker knowledge to a number of other poker websites in the industry. It goes without saying her efforts to promote women in poker continue on till this day.