The top of the five richest poker players is currently made up by Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, Jamie Gold, Phil Hellmuth and Scotty Nguyen.
The first four you have already met through our articles in this magazine. As for the last of them, the American of Vietnamese origin, the first thing that needs to be said about him is the fact that his life was as agitated as his unpredictable game style.
THE SMALL TRAMP
Scotty Nguyen was born in year 1962 in Nha Trang, a town situated in the southern area of Vietnam. In the meantime, the area has become a tourist one, a true paradise in the desert. But when Nguyen was a child, this town was just a battlefield serving the conflict between North and South Vietnam and poverty was the one to guide the lives of the people living here. And so, Scotty’s mother decided it was better for her son to gather his clothes in a small pack and board to America. His first stop was in Taiwan, where he got hired as unqualified laborer. Two years later an American family offered to take care of him. Thus, his dream came true and he reached America. Except that the dream was not a nice one at first. The completely different climate in Illinois and the mindsets of the place made it impossible for him to adapt and so the little one asked the state to look for a new family for him in a different area. Scotty was sent to California, in Orange County. Still, this too was a place of agitation. In high-school, complaints about his behavior were regular: he skipped class, caused scandals among neighbors. He became a good boy when he discovered the game of poker.
THE FIRST MILLION
At age 20, Scotty moved to Las Vegas to be truly in the middle of the action. His attraction for this city was increasing as he was playing poker with his friends in bars and wile listening amazed to the stories about the life and death games in the city of bets. He hired as a jack of all trades in a casino. He cleaned and washed the tables and from time to time he would sit at a playing table too. He turned his hobby into a career.
Starting from a few hundreds of dollars as bankroll, he managed in a record time to make one million dollars and to play with the highest stakes in Las Vegas. His extravagant lifestyle and addiction to alcohol and light drugs, combined with a bad gaming period brought him to ruin. And the lack of experience was clearly shown at his first professional tours where he signed up. He lost all the money he had won and was forced to return to a job that would ensure a constant income. But because he could not keep far from poker tables, he hired as a dealer in the casino Harrah Holiday and then at the Golden Nugget. Eventually, this job helped him accumulate the required experience to play high performance poker. He paid close attention to the faults of other players and learned one of the most important things required for a career, namely what not to do. At age 23, Scotty finally started playing real poker. Throughout time he won and lost, but was never forced to get hired to make a living. Then there was the great victory at WSOP Main Event 1998 that promoted him in the elite of world poker. Not having the money to sign up for the tour, Scotty was helped by Mike Matusow who was rewarded with a third of the million won for the WSOP title.
CHAMPION AMONG CHAMPIONS
Scotty Nguyen played in hundreds of tours, including 40 WSOP events, in more than a dozen WPT tours, as well as in competitions such as California State Poker Championship, Aussie Millions, Poker Superstars Invitational, U.S. Poker Bowl, Caribbean Poker Classic, Monte Carlo Millions or Austrian Masters. He won five bracelets and was the first player in history to win the main event of WSOP in 1998 and the $50k H.O.R.S.E. Championship, in 2008, as well as WPT Championship. Starting with the moment he started playing professional poker, he never left for one day the top of the most important 25 poker players. His winnings from live poker tours are in excess of $11 million.
ARTE VIZUALE/MEDIA
