Trans sharing WSOP success
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Both baseball and poker center around a World Series, were born in America and might be described as hours of boredom interspersed with moments of sheer terror. With those similarities in mind, it shouldn't be shocking to see one of the cycles of the former repeat itself in the latter.
At the turn of the last century, baseball's professionals sought respectability. Until they found it, the game was dominated to a surprising extent by the children of immigrants of Italian descent -- poor blue-collar kids who saw in the American pastime the opportunity to break from their pedestrian surroundings and find the American dream. Joe DiMaggio was the biggest sports star of his time in large part because he had been one of those kids.
As Italians were to the fledgling baseball, so, for the past five years, have Vietnamese players been an extraordinary force of disproportionate success in a game heralded for its accessibility to people of all colors, genders, ages and creeds. Each year, Vietnam's most common surnames are plentiful in poker's assorted player of the year rankings. Among those names is "Tran," and although neither Kenny Tran nor JC Tran has quite reached DiMaggio's status, both have thrived in a way that has earned them the spotlight on this week's episodes of the 2009 World Series of Poker main event on ESPN, Tuesday night at 9 ET.
It's interesting to see the divergent paths these two like-named, like-ancestried stars of today's poker have taken to get to the promised land. Kenny, long respected as a cash game beast, opted for a long time to stay out of the spotlight, preferring the comfortable confines of California's highest-stakes cash games in casinos and homes. One of Vietnam's boat people, Kenny found himself working on the other side of the table, dealing games at 21 years old and learning from the beats he saw other people take. He's a family man who finally had no choice but to explode onto the scene when twin runs in the 2007 $50,000 HORSE and that same year's main event made him poker's worst-kept secret after so many seven-figure years in the shadows. A year later, as if to prove it had all been for real, he was crowned the WSOP's heads-up world champion.
For JC, the odyssey wound through the poker world's best-exposed orifice, the tournament circuit. He was born in Hong Kong while his family waited for American relocation, finally getting here when he was 2 years old. As with so many Asian families, gambling was a part of home life -- a microcosm of a culture in which children will gamble with grandparents at festive occasions -- with a strong inclination toward superstitions trumpeting the luck of eights and a loathing of fours and so many more in between. JC was playing cash games in casinos from the dawn of adulthood and found his footing in tournament play just in time for the poker boom. Just 32, he already has on his résumé 28 WSOP cashes to go with two bracelets, a WPT Player of the Year title and as much respect from his peers as any tournament player in the world. His formulative successes came under bright lights as opposed to Kenny's dark rooms. However, those are small divergences in comparison with the broader story of their common ancestry and how it likely played into the stardom they've found here.
An understanding of the history of Vietnamese migration patterns with respect to the United States is helpful in finding the reasons for the Trans' phenomenal success. In large part, according to the American Immigration Law Foundation, en masse Vietnamese migration to America started in 1975 upon the end of the Vietnam War, with 125,000 Vietnamese brought to four refugee centers in the U.S. that year, with one in California. More on this in a moment.
In 1977, with the new Communist regime firmly in place and implementing new policies of oppression, a wave of Vietnamese nationals now known collectively as the boat people began fleeing the Southeast Asian nation. Men such as Scotty Nguyen and Men "the Master" Nguyen have told the stories time and again of floating away from home with little food, little gas and only a hope of survival. It is circumstances such as these that will help steel a resolve when the biggest hurdle one faces is making the right read with the pressure of mere fortune at stake. Small potatoes after gambling with your life.
America was quickly becoming a preferred destination for the Vietnamese at large, in part because of newly relaxed immigration laws such as 1980's Refugee Act. Within America, the fact that the Golden State -- like Vietnam -- borders the Pacific Ocean, as well as the Vietnamese community already established there starting in 1975 made California the ideal state for settlement. As of 2005, some 40 percent of all Vietnamese-Americans were living in Orange County, Calif.
The marriage of Vietnamese gambling culture and California law created a perfect storm. Since before the end of the war, poker has fallen under the "games of skill" umbrella, according to California state law. That means raked poker games are legal in the state even though other table games are not, making poker an especially attractive option for a people whose culture engrains gambling from infancy. In need of easy-to-train-for work, many Vietnamese flocked to the casino industry, with poker meccas such as the Commerce, the Bicycle Club and Hollywood Park providing the perfect chapel for that marriage.
The rest is history. The successes of Men and Scotty, David Pham, Chau Giang and Minh Ly showed a path to the American dream followed by young stars such as the two Trans, Nam and Tuan Le, Liz Lieu, and John "The Razor" Phan. For all that success, though, the overall success enjoyed by Vietnamese professionals is one of poker's best-kept secrets, thanks in large part to a distinct lack of self-branding.
Asked why Vietnamese males have had so much difficulty procuring American sponsorship deals, industry professionals who asked to have their names withheld suggested that the issue stemmed from two prongs.
"They don't generally seem to do much to promote themselves," one respondent said. "To get a deal now is all about continually giving yourself exposure. You just don't see a lot of these guys doing much to get their names out there, to market themselves. If you look at guys like Phil Hellmuth or Daniel Negreanu, they're out there building their brands every day, making themselves available and communicating with the public through blogs, Twitter … whatever. I'm just not seeing a lot of that from these other players."
It's a fair point that leads to what might truly be ailing the Vietnamese pros: a perception of communal isolation.
"It's harder for the average consumer to relate, perhaps not so much because of physical differences but because there's a perception out there that they stay to themselves," another industry insider said.
Given the negative attitude held by many American citizens in the late '70s regarding Vietnamese immigration, it would hardly be surprising if that perception held some basis in truth.
Fortunately, although American sponsorships haven't been forthcoming, new opportunities are arising. As poker's hand begins to take Asia into its grip, a new consumer base looks for stars to hold up and relate to. That has allowed JC Tran, Nam Le and others to finally find the pot of gold their results suggested should have been theirs long ago. Sponsorships with the APT (Asian Poker Tour) and APPT (Asian Pacific Poker Tour) are only the beginning as a hobbyist continent starts to see poker on television and witnesses the opening of legal card rooms in assorted gambling centers along with increased Internet access.
Of course, once the Asian public sees JC and Kenny, when people there hear Scotty grab the American dream with his famous "You call this one, it'll be all over, baby!" -- they'll feel obligated to emulate. Perhaps, as baseball did for the Italians, the success that's sure to follow will continue to effect the integration of Vietnamese-Americans. Regardless of those far bigger issues, though, at least we know these players will provide us with great poker and great TV. Be sure to tune in Tuesday night to see how the two Trans fare. Regardless of their WSOP results, the guess here is they'll both be happy with everything coming their way.
Gary Wise is a poker columnist for ESPN.com.
