All In Read online

  All In

  All In

  Jerry Yang

  with Mark Tabb

  Medallion Press, Inc.

  DEDICATION

  To my wonderful wife, Sue, and six children, Beverly Nubqubci,

  Justice Txujci, Brittney Nkaujnub, Brooke Nkaujntsuab,

  Brielle Nkaujntxawm, and Jordan Tswvyim.

  Also to the four most influential people in my life: my father,

  Youa Lo Yang, brother Cher Xay Yang, Grandmother Pla Her,

  and Aunt Mee Yang.

  Published 2011 by Medallion Press, Inc.

  The MEDALLION PRESS LOGO

  is a registered trademark of Medallion Press, Inc.

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment from this “stripped book.”

  Copyright © 2011 by Jerry Yang

  Cover design by James Tampa

  Edited by Emily Steele

  Photography by Eric Curtis

  Shot on location at the Pechanga Resort & Casino®

  Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard Sreet., Suite 200, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80920.

  www.alivecommunications.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro

  Printed in the United States of America

  Title font set in Hattori Hanzo

  Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  First Edition

  Contents

  Prologue: The Longest of Long Shots

  1 In the Shadow of Vietnam

  2 The Hmong Tom Sawyer

  3 “I Can Do This”

  4 Vegas or Bust

  5 A Not-So-Distant Thunder

  6 Escape

  7 Two Tournaments, One Prize

  8 Between the Rio and the Roach Motel

  9 Through the Jungle

  10 Caught!

  11 Across the Mekong

  12 “I Actually Belong Here”

  13 An Improbable Climb

  14 Next Stop: The Final Table

  15 A Place Where People Went to Die

  16 The Happiest Day

  17 Free at Last

  18 On the Cusp of a Dream

  19 Landing in Paradise

  20 “I’m All In”

  21 This Is America?

  22 The Jerry Yang Show

  23 Reaching for the American Dream

  24 It All Comes Down to This

  Postscript: The Heart of a Champion

  Appendix: Jerry’s Winning Poker Strategies

  8 Things Beginning Players Need to Know

  Top 8 Rookie Mistakes

  Top 8 Tells

  Top 8 Hands to Play

  Basic Tournament Strategy

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  The Longest of Long Shots

  “Hey, Jerry? Oh my gosh, I can’t believe it’s you. I just want to tell you, man, I think you are awesome, and I know you’re going to win this thing. Wow, I can’t believe it’s you. Hey, Jerry, if it’s not too much to ask, can I shake your hand?”

  “May I wash my hands first?” I said to the complete stranger who’d started talking to me the moment I’d stepped out of the restroom stall in the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.

  “Yeah, man, sure. Oh my gosh. Wow. I can’t believe I just met the guy who’s about to win the freakin’ World Series of Poker. Wow.” I thought this stranger might pass out right there on the restroom floor. No one had ever been this excited to meet me before.

  I walked to the basin to wash my hands. When I turned around, my new biggest fan had a crowd around him.

  “Hey, Jerry,” one after another called out, “we’re with you all the way, man. You can do it.”

  I tried to push my way through the crowd, shaking hands as I went. Finally, my older brother and my two brothers-in-law made a path to the door for me.

  “Yeah, Jerry. Go get ’em, man,” the bathroom crowd cheered.

  I’d never experienced anything like this in my entire life. Of all the places in this crowded casino, I’d thought the restroom would be the one where I might find a moment of peace. And after playing poker fourteen hours straight, that’s exactly what I needed.

  Nine players had started out at the final table at noon on Tuesday, but at two o’clock Wednesday morning, two remained: Tuan Lam and me. We had played so long, with so much on the line, that I could hardly think straight. I knew if the reception I received in the casino restroom was any indication of what lay ahead, I wouldn’t have any quiet moments to myself for a very long time.

  Making my way toward the final head-to-head showdown, I felt confident. I had a huge chip lead, which made me the odds-on favorite to walk away with the title of World Series of Poker Champion and the huge payday that came with it. However, I knew that in Texas Hold ’Em, chip leads disappear in a hurry. Even so, two weeks earlier when I’d arrived in Las Vegas, no one had counted on me even finishing in the money. I was just one of more than 6,000 poker wannabes. Now I was on the brink of taking poker’s biggest prize. I could hardly believe what was happening.

  Smiling, I turned to my brother as we walked through the hallway toward the Amazon Room and the final showdown. “This is crazy.”

  I couldn’t hear his reply.

  “Jerry, Jerry, over here, Jerry!”

  “How about a picture?”

  “How about an autograph?”

  “Can I shake your hand, Jerry?”

  “How about it, Jerry?”

  A huge crowd filled the hallway. So many people called out my name that they drowned out my brother’s voice. Pressing against the rope separating spectators from players, they reached toward me as I walked by, snapping pictures like fans at a red carpet Hollywood premiere.

  I almost turned around to see if Jerry Lewis or Jerry Seinfeld or some other famous Jerry was behind me, but they were cheering for me: Jerry Yang. On the first day of the World Series of Poker, tournament officials had pulled me aside and asked if I was the Jerry Yang, the cofounder of Yahoo. When I’d told them, “No, I’m just a psychologist and family counselor from Temecula, California,” they’d shrugged and said, “Oh, sorry to have bothered you.”

  Now those same officials were giving me the royal treatment as security guards escorted me toward the Rio’s Amazon Room. White dots from all of the camera flashes filled my sight.

  Patting me on the back, my brother said, “This is for you, Vaam,” calling me by my Hmong name.1 “Enjoy it.”

  “This way, Mr. Yang.” One of the four security guards assigned to me pointed the way to the Amazon Room.

  Calling the warehouse-sized space a room doesn’t do it justice. Over the past two weeks, I’d spent so much time in it that I could have made it my permanent address.

  As we walked toward the door, I remembered the first time I’d walked in. Over 2,000 poker players had sat in groups of nine around tables as far as the eye could see. And that was only one-third of the players in the tournament. Now, out of all those thousands, two players remained. In a few moments, we would start playing again, winner take all.

  “Let me get that for you, Mr. Yang,” a guard said. He threw the door open, and I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  Dead ahead, in the glare of the television lights, sat the feature table, the one wh
ere I’d played since noon the previous day. But it looked different.

  During the twenty-minute break, tournament officials had stacked $8.25 million in cash on the table. The little boy inside of me wanted to run and grab a stack of bills, then thumb through them to make sure they were real.

  I wonder if Tuan Lam had the same thought. Like me, Tuan had once been forced to flee his Southeast Asia home to live in a refugee camp. When I’d come to America at the age of twelve, I had one pair of pants, one shirt, and the first pair of shoes I’d ever owned. Now, even if I choked my four-to-one chip lead, I would walk away with more money than my mind could imagine.

  How did I get here? I asked myself. How did I get from the hills of Laos to here?

  “Hey, Jerry,” a fan yelled out, pulling me back into the Amazon Room.

  Other fans joined. “Jerry! Hey, Jerry, you’re gonna win this thing. Jerry, we believe in you.”

  So many people cheered that I couldn’t understand what they all said.

  Then they began chanting, “Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, Jerry …”

  I couldn’t believe it. These people who had never heard of me before I’d made it to the final table now wanted me to win.

  I waved, which made them scream even louder: “Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, Jerry …” They all looked so happy, as if they were about to win no less than $4 million.

  Across the room, fans from Tuan’s adopted country of Canada waved flags and chanted his name.

  It felt like a giant party, not a poker tournament.

  I spotted my wife in the second row of the stands closest to the table and tried to get to her.

  The fans in the Amazon Room, unlike in the hallway, weren’t held back by ropes. Every few steps, I’d be stopped by someone. “Jerry, man, you’re the greatest. Would you sign my hat?” A man shoved a Sharpie at me.

  Another man pulled up his sleeve. “Hey, Jerry, how about an autograph?”

  “What do you want me to sign?”

  “Right here. Just sign right here.” He pointed to his bicep.

  So many people crowded toward me. I signed hats, shirts, poker chips, cards—anything and everything people thrust my way. About the time I thought the crowd was going to swallow me, one of the security guards came to my rescue.

  I didn’t have much time before play resumed. I had to get to my wife. I needed to touch her, to hold the one person in the room who anchored me to reality before I allowed myself to get swept up in this unfolding dream.

  My wife stood and smiled.

  I grabbed her and held on, almost breaking down and crying. She and I had come so far to arrive at this moment.

  I had spent weeks trying to convince her to drop her objections to my taking up poker for the first time. She worked nights as a blackjack dealer in a casino near our home and had seen too many lives destroyed by gambling. With six kids, a mortgage, and a car payment, the last thing she needed was for her husband to blow his paycheck in a card room. I agreed with her. I didn’t want to be a gambler, just a poker player. Who would have expected we would be standing here today?

  “Sue,” I said, but she couldn’t hear me.

  The crowd’s cheering vibrated the floor.

  I placed my mouth next to her ear and shouted, “Pray for me. Keep praying.”

  I pulled back a bit so I could look at her beautiful face. Her eyes looked so tired. She’d sat in this same spot since the first card of the final table had been dealt, living and dying with me through every hand.

  Tears welled in her eyes. She didn’t want to cry in front of so many people, but she couldn’t help herself.

  I wrapped my arms around her. “Don’t cry, honey. Don’t cry. We made it. Win or lose, we made it. You will never have to work nights again.”

  Her lips moved as she tried to say something. Even if she could have made the words come out, I wouldn’t have been able to hear her.

  My mother was standing next to Sue. She’s actually my stepmother, but she is the only mother I have known. When I was a little boy in Laos, I’d watched my real mother die giving birth to my younger brother. As I hugged the noble woman I’d always known as my mother, I could tell she was fighting back tears.

  In truth, she had little idea what was happening at the poker table. To decipher the action at the table, she had to wait to see who pumped their fists or jumped around. Later, I’d see that the television cameras had caught her raising her hands and shouting, “Hallelujah. Praise God!” a few times. For the Hmong, that is a pretty wild display of emotion.

  After hugging her, I stepped over to greet my father. “Well,” I shouted, “this is it.” I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. I was so happy just to have him here with me.

  When I was growing up, my father never allowed me or my brothers or sister to play cards or checkers or chess—or anything that might come close to a game of chance. I hadn’t dared tell him I’d started playing poker when I’d entered my first tournament in 2005. And I sure hadn’t told him I was going to Las Vegas—Sin City—for the 2007 World Series of Poker after I’d won my seat at one of the casinos near my home. If he’d objected to checkers when I was a boy, you can imagine how he felt about Las Vegas and the biggest poker tournament in the world.

  Once I’d survived the tournament long enough to finish in the money, though, I’d called and told him where I was and what I was doing. As soon as he’d heard the words “Vegas” and “poker,” he’d handed the phone to my brother and refused to even talk to me.

  A couple days later, I’d called him again. By this point, I had played my way into the final thirty-six, which meant I would take home no less than $350,000. This time he’d stayed on the line, but he hadn’t believed me. My brother had to go online and show my father the tournament results on a poker website. Only then had Dad agreed to come to Las Vegas to support me.

  Standing there looking at my father just moments before the final showdown, I couldn’t help but think about all he’d brought me through. Many sons call their fathers heroes, but I have good reason to call my father my hero. He saved my life.

  When I think of tens of thousands of my people executed throughout Laos, along with all those who died in Cambodia and Vietnam after the Americans evacuated for good in 1975, I cannot understand why my life was spared. Whatever the reason, it was my father who had made it happen.

  We’d come to America, to the projects of Nashville and Kansas City. I’d watched my father work from early in the morning until late at night to support our family. Because he was a refugee who couldn’t speak English, he’d had to take the kind of jobs no one else wanted. But he’d never complained. He’d done whatever he had to for his family to survive.

  And now my father stood next to me as the crowd cheered for his son, who was on the verge of taking poker’s biggest prize. He seemed so out of place, but then again so did I.

  At 5 feet 2 inches, I hardly look old enough to venture inside a casino. Without my dark glasses and the ball cap I keep pulled down low during every poker hand, I looked like some guy who’d wandered in by mistake. One poker magazine reported that after the World Series of Poker I looked like a lost and stunned Scooby-Doo when the villain is revealed. Believe me when I say that based on looks, no one ever mistakes me for a card shark, much less a poker champion.

  I looked up at my father and grinned.

  He reached out and embraced me, a very non-Hmong thing to do. In our home country, fathers don’t hug their sons in public or anywhere else. But on this day, my father squeezed me tight.

  I never asked him, but I believe he, too, was thinking about how far we’d come since that day we’d fled our village in Laos.

  “Father, will you pray for me? Don’t ask God to make me win. But please pray I’ll have the wisdom and courage for what lies ahead.”

  “Of course, Vaam,” my father said in Hmong. “I’ve prayed that same prayer for you every day of your life.”

  An announcement came through the public address system. My twenty-min
ute break into reality was over. Pulling my cap low and putting my sunglasses back on, I walked to the table.

  “Good luck,” I said to Tuan Lam.

  “Yeah, you too, Jerry.” Tuan shook my hand.

  The television lights came up, and the dozen cameras moved into position.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the public address announcer said, “the final two competitors in the 2007 World Series of Poker are … from Canada, with 23 million in chips, Tuan Lam!”

  The crowd behind Tuan erupted. Canadian flags popped up everywhere. I thought my eardrums might explode.

  “And from the United States of America, with over 104 million in chips, the first man in the history of the World Series of Poker to accumulate more than a million in chips, Jerry Yang!”

  I’d thought the Canadians were loud. The announcer could hardly be heard. As soon as he said, “the United States of America,” more than two-thirds of the crowd in the Amazon Room sprang up and screamed and cheered, the roar quickly evolving into three distinct, repeating sounds: “U.S.A.”

  Even now, four years later, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as I remember that moment. No one in the audience that day could have possibly known what those three letters meant to me.

  No one, that is, except my family.

  Since the day I crossed the Mekong River and escaped Laos, I have not had a country to call my own. Refugees surrender their citizenship the moment they leave their home country. For four and a half years, my family and I barely survived in a Thai refugee camp, hoping to someday find a home.

  Even after arriving in America, I’d always felt like an outsider. When I’d come here, I hadn’t known the language or any of the basic customs. Other children in the projects had teased me because of the shape of my eyes and my thick accent.

  But on this day, Tuesday, July 17, 2007, the country where I’d lived nearly thirty years finally embraced me as its own.

  “U.S.A. U.S.A. U.S.A.” The crowd kept chanting.

  I turned and waved to my new fans, sunglasses hiding the welling tears. Right then I knew, no matter what happened, I had already won more than I could have ever dreamed. For the first time since my early childhood, I was home. From the hills of Laos, across the Mekong River, through the refugee camps in Thailand, to the projects of America, to middle-class life in Southern California, oh, what a long journey I’d made to get here.