ASIAN POP All In

Play Online Poker


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 stuff, you have to be really scrappy to make it through and come out the other side. I hear things from my Asian friends on the circuit, about being tortured, thrown in jail, going hungry. And you know what? It makes losing a few hands of poker not seem so bad. It makes you a lot tougher mentally -- and that's the difference between winning and losing at this game."

Many other reasons for Asian poker preeminence are floated by interviewees I spoke with for this story -- such as the fact that most Asian cultures don't subscribe to the Western/Christian idea that gambling is a sin, or the statistical/mathematical aspect of poker (and we all know that Asians are great at math!), or as Johnny Chan jokingly suggests, the inherent intellectual superiority of Asians ("Man, it's because we're the smartest people in the world!").

But the one that convinces me most is the one that the players themselves uniformly profess: Asian players are hungrier. In some cases, they have something to prove. In others, they have someone to provide for.

Sweetening the Family Pot

Most of the flashier stars on the circuit are blunt about why they got into the life. Big-money poker is the only game there is in which skill, smarts and a little bit of luck can literally make you a millionaire overnight. But while they're not ashamed of owning mansions and Maseratis or going on the occasional $20,000 afternoon shopping spree, the Asian players I spoke to consistently cited family as the main reason they decided to go pro.

"I support 40 people, baby," says Scotty Nguyen. "I built the most beautiful house in Nha Trang, six stories, 14 bathrooms, 10 bedrooms, for my mom, my sister and her family. First thing I did when I won the World Series in 1998 was build that house for my mom. Then I built houses for my brothers and my sister. You know, baby, I give to my family, nothing less than three mil. All my winnings, baby."

Even though most have become who they are against the wishes of their families, the instinct of putting family first is still strong. Not to mention the thrill of, well, proving mom and dad wrong for a change.

Says Johnny Chan: "I started gambling as a pro at 16, when it was actually illegal, but the casinos didn't care back then so long as I had money. And my parents hated it. But you know what? I'm the most recognized poker player in the world. Be a doctor, a lawyer, you may have a good living, but you're never gonna be recognized around the world."

The New Girl

It's not just the old-school guys who feel the burden of family responsibility.

"It's my only talent, I feel like I have a duty to use it," laughs Liz Lieu, who in less than a year of play has gone from total anonymity to widespread recognition as one of poker's rising stars.

"I have to help my parents out. My mom and dad, they did everything for us, and now it's only right that I do the same thing for them, so I pay for all their expenses. When I'm at a table, playing a tournament, I try that much harder. I can't fail, because if I do, I'm bringing others down with me."

The motivation seems to be working. Lieu finished fifth in the first public event of 2005's World Series of Poker and money-placed in three of the five events she entered at the Festa, including her final-table finish in Event 4. She's also attracted her share of smitten fans: "It's flattering ... I got a lot of that at the Bellagio, guys coming up to me asking me to sign 8x10 photos" -- not to mention bloggers and message board mavens following every move of "Lovely Liz."

Lieu -- who, like the vast majority of Asian poker pros is Vietnamese American -- first got into the game right after high school, when a now ex-boyfriend started a home game for his circle of friends. "I was immediately hooked," she says. "Poker was the only thing I've ever really been into learning. I ran my own game, I dealt cards, I did anything I could to learn."

She remembers that when she first started out, she'd refuse to leave the table until she made money, often sitting and playing for 24 hours straight ("I can't do that anymore ... you get older, you're not as strong"). After eight years of honing her skills, she went pro four years ago at the age of 26 and now makes a living playing 4-8 games (minimum bet $400, maximum $800) at card clubs like L.A.'s Commerce.

"At some point, someone says, let's play the game up, let's go to 6-12, 8-16, whatever, and then the game starts getting really big. Usually it's me," she laughs. "I've lost $70,000, $80,000 a night before, and won over $150,000."

This past April, Lieu played her first big event, at the World Series, and made final table. "Now I'm hooked," she says. "I'm on the circuit -- there's always a tournament somewhere. I just got back from the Bellagio, next week is Indiana and then in two or three weeks there's one at Foxwoods."

In between, there are 10-hour sessions at the Commerce, three to five nights a week. When Lieu gets home, she's often too wound up to slumber. Her self-prescribed remedy: a few hours playing Internet poker. "I go online and play until I fall asleep," she says. "Half the time, when I fall asleep, the computer's still on."

Unfortunately, her newfound fame has made playing the sites more difficult. "My handle's 'Twinkie,' and when nobody knew me, that was kind of an advantage -- I was an Asian woman named Twinkie, and there was always someone who'd want to play me, thinking, 'Hey, she's probably not much of a challenge.' Now, every time I try to start a heads-up game, it's 'No, Liz,' 'No, Liz,' 'No, Liz.' I can wait four hours and no one will want to play."

Fifty-hour work weeks. Sleepless nights. At the end of the day, once the facade of glamour has been stripped away, the poker life seems a lot less appealing. There are bad runs, too.

"A few years ago, I was going through some hard times with relationships, and that really messed up my mind when it came to poker. I went for months where I just couldn't win -- I'd get pocket aces and still get cracked; anything I played, I'd lose. I lost a lot of money."

Blowing hundreds of thousands gambling isn't something you can go to your parents for commiseration about. And neither the grueling schedule of the life nor the politics of the game lends itself to making a lot friends.

"I try to keep a distance," she says. "I'm not social. I take my work seriously, and the less friends you have, the easier it is to play your game. You start getting close to people, it gets harder to play against them."

One person she is close to is Poker Player of the Year favorite John Phan, another young Vietnamese American.

"We're the same age," she says. "We met each other playing, and when I first met him, we got along really well -- not in a boyfriend-girlfriend way, more like brother-sister. But he's always been there for me. When I went through that bad time a few years ago, he was there for me. He's my best friend. One of my few good friends I have that I trust and hang out with."

Poker is a lonely game. At its core, it's about deceit, distrust and suspicion. As Lieu puts it, "It's not a nice scene -- there are a lot of bad people out there."

Which is why, despite their own passion for the game, players hesitate when asked if they'd let their own kids get into the life. "Baby, poker is the hardest game," says Scotty Nguyen. "Very, very stressful. It can change you into a nasty person, and I don't want my kids to go through that."

Johnny Chan agrees. "I have six kids. Some of them want to follow in my footsteps, and I won't let 'em. Let 'em stay in school first. Although my 13-year-old, Joy, she has the killer instinct. If I did let her play, I think she could get good. She could be pretty close to me."

And for Lieu, there's no question about it -- it's not a career that she'd choose for any of her kids. In fact, it's one that she doesn't see doing herself for the rest of her life. "I stay up so many nights, I don't eat right, I'm always traveling. I've seen myself age a lot," she says. "I haven't even gotten my health back since the World Series of Poker. If you want to do this, your whole life is based around it. I'll probably die at age 40 if I keep up the way I'm going right now.

"I just want to take care of my family, my parents, and see them have a good life. Eventually, I want to find something else to do. Maybe get married. I don't know."

But then she laughs. "But even if I'm no longer doing this as a living, I know I won't be able to stop playing poker for good. I'll always be playing poker."


***

PopMail A couple of quick things before I get to something important. Johnny Chan asked me to mention his book, "Play Poker Like Johnny Chan" -- and you know what? When Johnny talks, people listen. In addition to offering some sage advice if you ever intend to sit at the felt and play, it also provides choice anecdotes from his life and career -- and those of some of his fellow greats, like Doyle Brunson and Chip Reese.

Second, I got a lot of mail, most of it (thankfully) fairly positive about the last column, which, if you remember, explored, among other things, the eating of dogs.

I do want to note two messages in particular -- one from Marjorie Jorgensen, a member of the Jindo Project, asking for permission to post my piece. That reminded me to suggest you visit the Jindo Project if you want to find out more about the amazing Jindo breed, and even better, if you're a caring and patient person interested in adopting one ... because they're not an easy breed to keep, and far too many show up in shelters, abandoned by their original owners.

The second message comes from Eleanor M., a Filipino American woman from the Bay Area who now lives in St. Gallen, one of two Swiss cantons where dog eating continues to this day.

"My husband is from the Canton of Appenzell," she says. "Although he's never eaten dog, or at least believes he hasn't, it certainly is a fact that dog meat is eaten in our region. ... On another note, I'd rather be the butt of a dog-eating joke than an Asian woman in Switzerland. It seems to be the belief of many Swiss men and quite a few Swiss woman that almost all Asian women either work in bordellos or were bought from some agency in Asia that specializes in 'mail order brides.' It was hard trying to acquire a thick skin against all the prejudicial thinking the people have over here."

Which only goes to show that dog eating isn't the only stereotype that Asians face out there.

And now, on to something very important.

A good friend of mine, a talented writer and a leader in the Asian American community, experienced a personal tragedy last week. The parents of Curtis Chin, founder of the Asian American Writers Workshop, were in a car accident that seriously injured his mother Shui Kuen and killed his father Allen.

Curtis' family, who were among the first Asians in Michigan, opened Chung's Restaurant in 1940, and their family business served as the center of the Chinese American community for many years -- even being included in a small part of the documentary "Who Killed Vincent Chin?." Curtis' father was picking up supplies with his wife to start a typical day at the restaurant when the accident occurred.

The family, working with Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy, a national nonprofit based in San Francisco, has established the Shui Kuen and Allen Chin Foundation to offer a $1,000 scholarship each year to an Asian American college freshman whose family comes from the food service industry.

"We felt this was not only part of our own identity, but also a statement about the Asian American community," says Curtis. "My father always stressed three things: education, hard work and good food."

I urge you to make a tax-deductible donation to the fund or suggest other ways that you might help. Donations, which should be made out to AAPIP/The Shui Kuen and Allen Chin Foundation, can be sent c/o Curtis Chin at 215 S. Santa Fe Ave., #3, Los Angeles, CA 90012. You can also e-mail Curtis at SKAFoundation@aol.com.

Thanks, and see you in two weeks.