- by Jeff Yang, special to SF Gate
Thursday, October 27, 2005
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2005/10/27/apop.DTL
If you're a poker buff, you know that some of the biggest names on the money tour are Asians -- like legendary two-time World Series of Poker champ Johnny Chan and refugee-turned-rounder Scotty "The Prince" Nguyen. Meanwhile, a new generation of Asian American card sharks are beginning to deal themselves into the game. Jeff Yang checks in with some of the reigning Asian kings and queens of the pro poker circuit.
Las Vegas
Visit Vegas and the first thing you'll notice is that the city's strange interlude as a wholesome vacation destination is done, over and out. Forget the slightly creepy era of "Bring the Family to Vegas!" (As what -- marker security?) The Gray '90s are over, kids! This is Sin City -- Now With 30 Percent More Sin!
Which isn't to say that the theme-park atmosphere isn't still there: Vegas wouldn't be Vegas without garish lights, flashy simulacra (if you're looking for a 30-foot-tall model of just about anything, it's here) and milling, disoriented crowds gawking at the aforementioned lights and simulacra.
It's just that these days, the themes are a lot more ... mature. The buccaneer-themed resort Treasure Island is now calling itself "TI." As part of its overhaul, its free outdoor come-on show has been renamed "The Sirens of TI" and now features a crew of buxom, underdressed "pirettes" lip-synching to dialogue studded with dopey puns on "chest" and "booty." (As one wag was heard to joke, TI apparently now stands for "Tits Included.")
But of course, T&A are just two of the subsidiary vices available in America's adult wonderland. The big draw here is, and always will be, gambling in all of its many forms. It's a city of gilded mousetraps, designed to funnel you into any of a thousand venues where you can be surgically parted from your cash.
Once you're actually in a casino -- and you will be -- you'll immediately notice a second thing about Vegas: It's neatly divided into two separate and decidedly unequal worlds. One is for everyday tourists, video poker addicts and slots monkeys -- joes who lose a week's paycheck and chalk it up to a learning experience.
The other is for people who are here to play for real. This includes "whales" -- the high rollers who sustain casinos the way buffalo once provided for Native Americans (before casinos did, that is) -- and grinders, cash-game players who methodically crank out a living at the tables while staying carefully anonymous. Finally, there are the gamers. The big names. The rock stars of the gambling world. And the game they play, of course, is the king of games: poker.
This week, the gamers were here in force because the casino with the biggest game in town, the Bellagio, was hosting the Festa al Lago, an 11-day orgy of competitive poker culminating in the main event, the million-dollar World Poker Tour Doyle Brunson North American Championship.
The big news buzzing around the Bellagio was that a tour rookie, a sleepy-eyed Taiwanese American kid from Texas named Weber Kang, had just won the Festa's Event 4, beating out giants like Michael Mizrachi and Cowboy Kenna James to take home $173,085 in winnings and a complimentary invitation to the April 2006 World Poker Tour Finals. Joining him at the final table: fellow circuit newcomers Bryan Kim -- who would later himself win Event 8, pocketing $257,585 -- and Liz Lieu, the only female finalist in any of the tournament's 10 events.
A few days before, another Asian player, Nam Le, had won over $140,000 by taking Event 2. And a week later, the grand shebang at the $1,060,050 Main Event itself eventually went to Minh Ly, a longtime king of the cash-game scene who's recently made big moves on the tournament circuit.
The Festa was hardly an exception. If, as actor/card buff Ben Affleck was famously quoted as saying, "poker is the new golf," Asians are dominating the new golf even more than we dominate the old golf. According to Card Player magazine, 22 of the world's top 100 tournament players are Asian, including the current favorite for 2005 Player of the Year, John Phan. Last year, half of the top 20 PotY finishers were Asian, prompting eventual winner Daniel Negreanu to pen an editorial asking why the staggering ascendancy of Asians on the pro poker scene has been so generally ignored.
"I could provide you a list of Vietnamese players whom you rarely hear much about who play much better than many of the players that ESPN spends a lot of time covering," wrote Negreanu. "Nam Le, Hung La, David Pham, John Phan, J.C. Tran, Can Kim Hua, Minh Nguyen, Vinnie Vinh, Tuan Le, and so many more that I could fill the rest of a page. ... So, why is it that we hear more about Dutch Boyd on ESPN than we do Minh Nguyen?"
He goes on to point to a number of possible reasons, including language barriers, a tendency toward soft-spoken, stoic or other demeanors that play better at the table than on TV and, of course, good old-fashioned racism: "Overall, the Asian man isn't as respected in our society as he should be. ... He is often ridiculed, but rarely taken seriously."
While all of these factors have clearly contributed to the under-the-radar nature of Asian players, the most fundamental may simply be that Asian pros have generally been focused more on raking than repping. Winning tournaments and being profiled on ESPN may be glamorous and fun, but historically, it's what's on the table that has paid the rent.
"I had dinner a while ago with one Asian player who in a one-month period at the Bellagio big-money game won $6.5 million," says Gary Thompson, World Series of Poker director of operations. "This same guy, he was playing in a tournament where the first prize was $350,000, and he busted out after playing for 12 or 14 hours. He told me, laughing, 'I work so hard for a first prize of $350,000, and in the side games, I can win $300,000 in an hour."
Poker Celebrities and Celebrity Poker
So why waste time playing grueling marathons against fields of up to 3,000 players when the real cash is sitting on the sidelines?
One motivation, of course, is ego -- proving you're the best -- the best in the room, maybe the best in the world. Ego is a competitive force that drives some of pro poker's most colorful and beloved characters -- like Johnny "Orient Express" Chan, two-time winner of the World Series of Poker, and Scotty Nguyen, the cheerful assassin whom some have dubbed "The Prince."
"When I first started playing back in 1978, they laughed at me and said, 'Who's this Asian kid? Asians can't play poker,'" says Chan. "Three years later, I was beating 'em all. And I mean all of them. I won two World Series in a row, in 1987 and 1988. Nearly won three, and no one else has even come close to that. That's why I'm the best. That's why everybody wants to be Johnny Chan."
Nguyen, winner of the 1998 World Series of Poker, gently corrects him. "You tell Johnny, 'There's one guy bigger than you, and that's Scotty Nguyen.' Ask him, tell him to walk all around the world, England, Australia, and see who's recognized more, Scotty or you, and see what he says. Nobody's bigger than Scotty Nguyen, baby."
For veterans like Chan, Scotty Nguyen and Men "The Master" Nguyen, the tournaments traditionally weren't about winning money -- they were about keeping track of who's on top. The theory was, you play side games to pay bills. You play tournaments for bragging rights.
But a funny thing has happened in the past five years. Poker, once a blue-collar, backroom pursuit, suddenly rocketed into the stratosphere of the popular imagination -- going from fad, to phenomenon, to obsession in record time.
"Everyone's playing it," says Eric Morris, publisher of the poker lifestyle magazine Bluff. "Doctors. Lawyers. Grandmas are playing poker. Old men who used to play chess. Guys who used to play Dungeons and Dragons."
Not to mention, of course, celebrities -- from Brad Pitt to Matt Damon, Shannon Elizabeth to Tobey Maguire, Mimi Rogers to David Schwimmer. Some of them are even good: Jennifer Tilly, she of the helium voice and voluptuous figure, is actually the current reigning Ladies World Series of Poker Champion. (It bears mentioning that Tilly is half Chinese. Rack up one more for the Asians.)
The latter-day hipness of poker has turned its top pros into celebrities themselves -- pursued by fans and groupies, barraged with requests for interviews and autographs ... not to mention extremely lucrative sponsorships and endorsement and merchandise deals.
"A properly marketed World Series champion can make as much money through endorsements and appearances as he or she can from winning the event itself," says WSoP's Gary Thompson.
With poker riding such an incredible high, media-genic characters -- like Doyle Brunson, Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, Phil "The Brat" Hellmuth and Dave "Devilfish" Ulliott -- have been able to take their TV-friendly personas straight to the bank. Their popularity has, in turn, inspired a new generation of young players -- many of them introduced to the game via Internet poker sites -- to jump into the pool.
"You see kids in their 20s and 30s winning a few online games and then saying, 'Okay, I'm going to become a professional,'" says Joe "Joe Poker" Sebok, poker blogger/writer, and a rising star himself at just 26 years of age. "When people ask me how you decide to become a pro, I say, 'You don't.' You play, you move up the levels, play more, and suddenly you realize you're doing it for a living."
Sebok has been on the circuit for less than a year and a half but has already turned in two final-table performances, including a fifth-place finish at 2005's World Series of Poker. He does have a few advantages: His stepdad is Barry Greenstein, the Silicon Valley engineer who left the tech world for pro poker in 1991 and is now considered by many as one of the five best all-around players in the world.
Raised Betting
Although Sebok isn't Asian himself, having been raised in San Francisco and then going to UC Berkeley meant growing up around a lot of Asian Americans. His take on the rising tide of young Asians in the poker world reflects what he saw many of his friends go through in childhood.
"This is all conjecture, but Asian American kids, they get so used to high expectations -- you have to get As, you have to go to a good school, you have to be a doctor or a lawyer -- that you almost get used to disappointment. You do amazing things, and it's still never good enough. Maybe that's what hones that competitive edge, because in poker, you have to keep getting better or the game will pass you by."
For immigrants, childhood is even more of a proving ground for the round table. "I had a very tough time growing up, baby, I went through so much you got no idea," says Scotty Nguyen, who came to the United States as a young refugee.
"I came from scratch. A lot of Americans start out with millions from their parents. We Asians, we gotta learn from scratch. When I was young, I sat around on the street playing poker, and my dad would drag me home and beat me. But it doesn't matter, I just keep coming back, playing the same game, because my dad stopped buying me things at nine years old.
"Everything I had, I won on my own -- I won my clothes, my shoes, my books for school, everything, playing poker. Before I left Vietnam, I brought home to my family 100,000 dong, which is like $100,000 here. And how many people are going to make $100,000 over there?"
Or as Sebok puts it: "You go through horrible st
