All In

by Jerry Yang

  Now it was my turn to push. “Three million.”

  Philip stared a hole into me. “Call.”

  The turn came: a three of diamonds.

  Philip checked again.

  The mix of suits on the board meant a flush was highly unlikely, not that it mattered. Philip hadn’t played as if he was working on a flush. While a gut shot straight still loomed, the odds were stacked against it.

  Barring a bad card on the river, I knew I had him. “All in.”

  He had more than enough chips to cover me, which meant I would go home if I lost this hand, but my chip stack was close enough to his to make sure that if Philip called and lost, his tournament would be all but over. Based on what was already on the board, I didn’t think he would call.

  “Good hand, Jerry,” Philip said as he slid his cards toward the dealer, folding the hand and giving me the 11.39 million in the pot.

  After less than an hour and a half of play, I was now chip leader at the final table of the main event of the World Series of Poker with over 25.04 million in chips.

  As I stacked the chips, John Kalmar looked across the table and said with a smile, “Tell you what, Jerry. I’m just going to sit here and let you get everybody else’s chips, and then battle it out head-to-head. How’s that sound?”

  I have to say, it sounded pretty good to me.

  Then Hevad Khan spoke up. “I told you since day one: best player I’ve ever played with in my life.”

  “Thank you.” I appreciated his compliment, even though I knew it was far from true. However, these comments helped me in another way. Just as Kenny Tran had tried to knock me off my game by making derogatory comments at the beginning of day six, these two well-meant comments were actually unintentional insults to the more experienced players still at the table. Essentially, John and Hevad were challenging the top players to step up to the plate and do something before this psychologist from California stole the main event bracelet right out from under their noses.

  One of the best players accepted that challenge on the very next hand.

  Many times, after losing a big hand, a player immediately wants to get his chips back. And when he has the chance to retake them from the player who just beat him, that can be hard to resist.

  Hand fifteen came. The first few players all folded.

  When it was my time to act, I looked at an ace-king off suit, also known as a big slick. “One million.” While not as aggressive as the one for the previous hand, this too was a very strong bet.

  Watkinson and Lam folded. Now it was Philip Hilm’s turn to act. He called.

  Both blinds folded. Once again, it was me against Philip Hilm.

  The flop hit the table. It was a king of diamonds, a jack of diamonds, and a five of clubs, giving me a pair of kings with a strong kicker. The two diamonds made a flush possible if he was holding diamonds.

  Just as in the previous hand, Philip checked. “Two million,” I said.

  Philip called.

  The dealer laid down the turn card, a two of hearts, a card that could not have helped either of us unless Philip was playing a pair of twos, which I highly doubted.

  Philip checked to me once more.

  I had the hammer and decided to use it. “Four million.”

  Now it was Philip Hilm’s chance to be the aggressor. He watched me push my chips into the middle. Then he sniffed and said, “I’m all in.”

  Believe it or not, the past couple of days I’d noticed every time Hilm bluffed, he’d sniffed. Now I had to decide whether he was sniffing because he was bluffing or because the air-conditioning was making his nose run.

  I breathed out. It was time for me to learn if all my research, notes, and read of the table were right or wrong. “I call.”

  Hilm smiled at me and flipped his cards over. My research had paid off. He had an eight-five, both diamonds, the same kind of hand he’d played the day before when he’d pushed around the short stacks.

  Yeah! I screamed inside. Outwardly, I showed nothing.

  When he saw my big slick, Philip groaned. Although he still had a chance of making the flush or hitting another five, I held the advantage. He had to get very lucky on the river, or his day was over.

  A six of clubs hit the table for the river, and just like that Philip Hilm went from chip leader to the first man out, all in the span of one hour and twenty-eight minutes.

  After taking all of Philip’s chips in two hands, I now held a commanding chip lead with twice as many chips as anyone else. Before I let that go to my head, I looked at Philip Hilm, shook hands with the other players at the table, and wished each one luck as Philip headed toward the door.

  At one time, he looked unbeatable, too, I reminded myself.

  Half an hour later, in hand twenty-one, I found myself in another head-to-head showdown with the second of the three most dangerous players at the final table. I was in the small blind; Lee Watkinson, the most accomplished pro at the table, had the big blind. All the other players had folded their way around to us.

  I raised a million.

  Lee paused, then said, “All in.”

  The previous two years, Lee Watkinson had been one of my favorite players to watch. He’s what I call tight-aggressive. That means he doesn’t play many hands, but when he has the cards, he pushes hard. The only way to have a chance against a player like this is to be the opposite. You must push when they are tight and be cautious when they become the aggressor.

  Lee had basically treaded water the first nearly two hours of play. This was his first all in, which made me cautious.

  Then I thought back on the reams of notes I had on him. This doesn’t make any sense. He doesn’t usually play like this. If he had pocket aces or kings, he would have slow played and kept me in the hand to milk me for everything he could get. No, this looks like a classic case of a frustrated player trying to scare everyone out of the hand early so he can grab the blinds and antes.

  I looked closely at Lee and tried to figure out what he was holding. He has to have something big enough to survive a call, maybe ace-five or a small pair, but I don’t think he has the hammer he wants me to think he has.

  All of this went through my head in about two seconds.

  “How many chips does he have?” I asked the dealer. The time it took them to count gave me a little more time to make a decision. I knew I had a decent hand: ace-nine off suit, and I put my odds of winning the hand at about fifty-fifty.

  It turned out he had 9.745 million in chips; I had 45.09 million. With my chip lead, fifty-fifty odds were good enough. “I call.”

  We turned our cards. When I saw Lee’s ace-seven off suit, I pumped my fist. Only three cards in the deck could beat me, barring some miraculous flush draw.

  As we waited for the flop, turn, and river, I did what I always do when a big pot is on the line. I prayed.

  ESPN’s cameras and microphones focused on me asking God to glorify His name. Only later, when I watched the broadcast at home, did I see Lee’s fiancée, Timmie, sitting in the stands, praying just as hard. Most television viewers probably found this odd; no one tuning in to a poker match expects to see a prayer meeting break out!

  Thankfully, I took the hand. Lee Watkinson’s day was over. In an interview several months later, Timmie was quoted as saying, “I guess you just can’t outpray Jerry Yang.”

  I don’t think that’s the case. However, God was gracious to me that day. In two hours, I’d knocked out two of the players I feared most and, as a result, increased my chip stack from 8.45 million to a staggering 55 million.

  Seven hands later, I knocked out Lee Childs, giving me over half of all the chips in play.

  In less than three hours, I’d personally knocked out three of the best players at the table and taken a commanding chip lead. Never in my wildest dreams could I have envisioned this day turning out like this.

  When I watched the ESPN broadcast, I heard Norman Chad refer to the final table as “The Jerry Yang Show” after I knocked
out Hevad Khan in hand fifty-six.

  ESPN edits the action so much that it looked as if I’d taken out four players in about an hour. Even so, five hours at the final table is a short time. To those watching at home, and even in the stands in the Amazon Room, a victory for me now looked inevitable.

  I knew better. Raymond Rahme took out John Kalmar, which left three large obstacles standing between me and the main event bracelet: Rahme, Tuan Lam, and, of course, the formidable Alex Kravchenko.

  Of all the players, the most surprising one to still be at the table, besides me, had to be Alex Kravchenko. That is not to take anything away from Alex. He’s an incredible player, but he’d spent most of day six stuck on the short stack, which is where he was now.

  With his just over 6 million in chips at the start of the day, most people thought he would be the first one out. I knew better. Alex is an excellent poker player. Whereas Philip Hilm played aggressively throughout the tournament, Alex was the opposite. I knew anytime he jumped into a pot, he had a hand.

  They say Texas Hold ’Em is a marathon, the proverbial tortoise and the hare kind of race. If that is true, Alex Kravchenko could teach all the tortoises out there a few things.

  When you have the short stack, you must be disciplined and wisely choose the hands you’ll play. I’ve rarely witnessed any player execute this strategy with the precision Alex demonstrated at the final table. He picked just the right spots to make an aggressive bet or go all in. Usually everyone folded to him, giving him the blinds and antes. You can survive a long time in a poker tournament if you pick up enough blinds and antes.

  During the first five hours of play, only one player, Hevad Khan, actually called him. By the time the river hit the table, Khan had doubled Alex up and weakened his own tournament.

  A short time later, Khan was gone while Alex kept on playing.

  I doubled Alex up for the first time just after five in the evening on the fifty-eighth hand. He went all in from the small blind, and I called from the large. I knew I had to knock him out as quickly as possible. I thought my jack-ten off suit gave me my chance.

  I was wrong.

  He turned over ace-ten off suit and increased his chip stack to just under 10 million, thanks to me.

  I still had over 68 million, but that wasn’t the point. I’d wanted to knock Alex out. The longer he stuck around, the more dangerous he became.

  Going up against a disciplined player demands extreme patience. His strategy relies on his ability to frustrate his opponent into playing borderline hands he can easily beat. A player like Alex Kravchenko refuses to be bullied by the larger stack. The only way to beat him is to wait for him to go all in and call with a superior hand. While that may seem obvious, it’s much easier said than done.

  In the next eight hours, I doubled up Kravchenko two more times. In the process, my chip stack shrank from a high of over 70 million down to just over 41 million.

  I still had the lead but not by much.

  The clock pushed toward one in the morning. We had now been playing poker for nearly thirteen hours, with periodic twenty-minute breaks sprinkled in every couple of hours.

  In the late afternoon, it had appeared I would make short work of this final table and easily take home the $8.25 million first prize, but nothing comes easily in this game, especially not with a man like Alex Kravchenko standing in your way.

  Hand 167 began with me in the big blind, Alex Kravchenko in the small blind. Tuan Lam, the first to act, folded, as did Raymond Rahme. Alex barely looked at his cards, then slid 2.1 million into the pot.

  I looked at my cards. Pocket eights, a hand that has been especially good to me. I glanced at Alex. His raise of 2.1 million was not as aggressive as it would have been twelve hours earlier when the blinds were much lower. He raised by the standard amount, three times the big blind of 600,000. Since he already had 300,000 in the pot, his bet was not that aggressive at all.

  My strategy going into the final table was to pick a spot early on and push Alex out of the tournament. I’d tried three times to knock him out and failed, though I still held a two to one lead over him. The three times I’d doubled him up, my hand had been good but not quite good enough.

  This seemed like the perfect spot to turn the tables. Come on, pocket eights, don’t fail me now. I swept my hand above my chips and announced, “I’m all in.”

  Alex didn’t look at me. He stared at his chip stack for a moment, thinking. Many players will look at their cards or stand up and walk around the room nervously while trying to decide whether or not to put their tournament on the line. Not Alex. He sat there, thinking, then said calmly, “I call.”

  The crowd in the Amazon Room came alive. Raymond Rahme jumped up and said something like, “Why’d he call? Why’d he call?”

  Alex showed the same steely discipline he had throughout the tournament. He stood up and turned his cards. Ace-king off suit. Ace-king, aka, a big slick, is the fifth strongest hand you can draw in No Limit Texas Hold ’Em. My pocket eights are only the thirteenth strongest. He’d made a very good call. I had come to expect no less from Alex Kravchenko.

  Now everything came down to the luck of the draw. I felt confident. In Asian culture, eight is the luckiest number of all. Two eights are even better.

  The moment the flop hit the table, I knew I had him. Queen, nine, and … you guessed it. An eight.

  The only way he could beat me now would be to hit a straight. He needed a jack and a ten on the turn and river, which was a long shot.

  I raised my arms and cheered. Unable to stay in one place, I turned around and ran to my cheering section, my family. My brother-in-law happened to be the first person I saw, so I hugged him.

  I quickly regained my composure and walked back to the table. “Come on,” I said under my breath. “Come on, nothing funny.”

  The turn card was a four of clubs. The river card didn’t matter.

  Finally, after thirteen hours, I’d knocked out the most tenacious player in the World Series of Poker. In hand 169, Raymond Rahme busted out when my ace-five beat his pair of kings.

  Now it was down to two, Tuan Lam and me.

  The day before the final table, Vegas oddsmakers had made Tuan Lam the odds-on favorite to win the title, while I was the longest of long shots. However, those odds were the exact opposite now.

  With 23 million, Tuan had slightly more chips than he’d had at the start of the day. I was leading with over 104 million and had become the first person in the history of the main event to hit the 100 million mark.

  However, if I’ve learned one thing in poker, it’s that no lead is ever safe.

  Ever.

  23

  Reaching for the American Dream

  My father approached me with a simple request when I was in ninth grade. We’d moved from the projects of Nashville to the projects of Kansas City a couple years earlier. “Xao, please, I ask one thing of you.” He looked extremely tired after having spent a long day making tool belts at a leather factory on the other side of the state line in Kansas City, Missouri.

  Looking into his eyes that day, I could see that the years of backbreaking work had taken their toll on him, and I felt fortunate that we lived in America. Few men lived to my father’s age in our homeland in the hills of Laos.

  “What is it, Father?”

  “Please finish your education. Graduate from high school. Then you will make your father very proud and happy.”

  My heart sank.

  It wasn’t that I thought he’d asked too much of me. No, deep in my heart I knew my father had asked too little. Have I shown you I’m capable of so little? I did not dare say it.

  Even though his request saddened me, I knew my father had not disrespected me. Over the first fourteen years of my life, I had disrespected myself. It wasn’t that I’d struggled academically. From my earliest days in school in Thailand, academics had always come easily to me. Unfortunately, I hadn’t yet learned to apply myself. I still wanted to be that Hmon
g Tom Sawyer and constantly found ways to get into mischief.

  I knew hard work and determination alone could lift me out of poverty, but I had to prove my Tom Sawyer days were past.

  In Nashville, my full Tom Sawyer had come roaring out one day. One of my cousins owned a bicycle that I absolutely loved, even though it was a girl’s. It had the long banana seat, small front tire, and sloping lines like a motorcycle’s. My father couldn’t afford anything like it, and I didn’t have any way to earn money to buy one.

  One afternoon, I walked to my cousin’s apartment and borrowed the bike, but I’m not sure her family knew that. If we hadn’t been related, someone might have accused me of stealing it. I didn’t think of it as stealing, though, since I planned to bring it back as good as new.

  There was one problem: I could barely ride. I took off on the bike, but I had trouble keeping it upright. Before I knew it—crash—I fell on the sidewalk.

  I jumped right up and took off again. I got a little farther this time before—crash—over I went once again.

  After a little while, I managed to keep from falling, which made me so happy that I pedaled harder. Only then did I discover another difficult part of riding: turning. Instead of falling, this time I crashed right into a tree, the impact throwing me to one side.

  Thankfully, I didn’t land on anything vital. Maybe on my head, but I wasn’t really using it right then, so it didn’t matter.

  I picked myself up, walked to the bike next to the tree, and planned to take off once again. Whenever I set my mind to learn something, I don’t let up until I master it; I still had a lot of work to do with the bicycle.

  My life as the Hmong Tom Sawyer always landed me in trouble. And this day was no exception. I picked up my cousin’s beautiful new bike only to discover the front wheel looked more like a pretzel.

  Oh no! I started to panic but calmed myself. Just fix it, Xao, and no one will know.