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  Now that all the delinquents were together, my father reached into the rafters and took down the bamboo stick my brothers and I were all too familiar with. He slapped it against a hand, and my buddies’ eyes grew wide as saucers. “Okay, Xao, this has gone on long enough. Tell me the truth. Did you kill Grandpa’s bird?”

  My friends turned to look at me. They knew if I cracked and confessed to something I hadn’t done, they’d be punished right alongside me.

  I looked my father in the eye, thinking, He doesn’t believe me. That upset me more than anything else. By raiding the chicken coop, I had lost my father’s trust. “No, Father, I am telling you the truth. I did not do it.” I spoke with all the sincerity a seven-year-old could muster.

  I don’t know whether he believed me or not, but with eyes full of anger and frustration, my father turned and walked the line to each of my buddies. “Did you kill this bird?”

  My buddies were so frightened that they could barely speak. Their answers came out in weak whispers no one could hear. The pathetic sound made me want to laugh, but I stopped myself. It would’ve been very bad timing.

  “Speak up. Give me an answer. Did you kill this bird?” my father yelled.

  Even more frightened now, they gave the same answer. “No.”

  With each denial, Grandpa and his sons became more upset. “Why are you wasting your time asking questions of liars? Do what you know you must.”

  “I am not going to waste any more time with you boys,” my father said. “Tell me right now what happened to that bird.”

  Even though we were innocent, the pressure to confess was overwhelming. My buddies could not move. I think if this had gone on much longer, they would have cracked.

  I spoke up for all of us. “Father, I swear to you, we didn’t have anything to do with killing that bird.”

  This sent Grandpa over the edge. He was determined to get a confession out of us, and he knew the way to do it. According to Hmong tradition, two simple tests will determine the guilt or innocence of a person accused of a crime. In the first test, the village elder takes a bowl of cold water and kills a chicken over it, catching the chicken’s blood in the water. As he kills the chicken, he pronounces a curse over the bowl. The accused must drink the water. If he’s guilty, he will die in a matter of weeks. I’d never heard of this until Grandpa demanded my father perform the test right then and there.

  “Dear Grandpa,” my father said, “remember we are talking only about a dead bird.”

  Grandpa seemed to soften a bit. “Well then, we should use the oil.” As Grandpa explained it, the second test of guilt or innocence involved dipping the finger of the accused into a pot of boiling oil. “We’ve done this many, many times,” Grandpa tried to reassure me, “and it always works. If you are innocent, the oil cannot harm you. But if you are guilty …” His voice trailed off.

  When my father hesitated, Grandpa pounded the table, pointed at him, and said, “You are our leader. It doesn’t matter that this is your son. You must do what’s right by the village.”

  I could tell by the look in my father’s eyes that I was in serious trouble. He was a fair man, but he was also a wise man. He would much rather have spanked me with a bamboo rod for something I hadn’t done than take the chance of having me severely burn my finger. Bruised bottoms heal much faster than deep-fried fingers. I don’t think he had any more faith than I did that the oil could prove one’s innocence, which led me to believe that he would go ahead and punish me to get this over with.

  Xao, I said to myself, you’d better do something now.

  In Hmong culture, children don’t address their elders unless they’re spoken to, but this was an extreme situation. “I agree, honorable Grandpa,” I said, “that the test of the boiling oil is the best way to prove my innocence.”

  My father looked shocked, and Grandpa seemed to calm down a bit. Both must have thought I was crazy.

  Before either could say a thing, I quickly added, “However, I have never seen the test of the oil, and neither have my friends. I want to make sure it works before I submit to it.” I looked straight at Grandpa. “Therefore, because we know you are completely innocent in this matter and you most certainly didn’t harm your own prize pheasant, I ask that you dip your finger in the oil first. Once I see that the oil cannot harm an innocent man, I will be next in line.”

  “How dare you speak to me like that?” Grandpa screamed in response. “How dare you challenge me?”

  I’d only thought he was angry before. He began flailing his arms and yelling so that everyone in the entire village could hear him. “You are an insolent, lying, horrible little boy. I will show you what we do to children like you.”

  I ducked just a bit, anticipating the blows I thought were coming.

  “Dear Grandpa,” my father interrupted, “I too have never seen the oil test. I would also like to know that it works before my son dips his finger into the pot. Would you be willing to do what he asks?”

  I could have sworn I saw just a hint of a smile at the corner of my father’s mouth.

  “What? How dare you ask such a thing of me?” Grandpa went on like that for a while, but pretty soon he saw that my father was serious. As angry as he was, he couldn’t bring himself to put his finger in boiling oil any more than I could.

  Eventually he backed down, grabbed his dead bird, and stormed out of our house just as angrily as he’d come in.

  I heard he and his sons ate that bird for dinner that night.

  Grandpa had tried to force me into making a false confession, but I’d turned the pressure right back around on him. Though I wouldn’t play poker for another thirty years, this was my first “all in” experience. I felt the pressure, and I might have buckled and confessed if they’d actually brought in the pot of oil, but I wasn’t going to allow anyone to force me to do something I knew I shouldn’t. I was innocent. More than that, I had to regain my father’s trust at any cost. I went all in, and Grandpa never called.

  Later that evening, after everyone had left our house, my father patted my head. “You did very well, Xao.” It was his way of telling me he was proud of me. You must understand, Hmong fathers don’t say such things to their sons. In our culture, male children are expected to act like men from birth. No father ever praises his son for doing what men are supposed to do. It’s not that they don’t love their sons, but they don’t express such feelings openly. My father actually praised me, telling me I was not merely expected to be a man; I was one.

  To survive in my world, I had to be.

  3

  “I Can Do This”

  For the first thirty-plus years of my life, I never played a hand of cards. Growing up, I didn’t play hearts or spades or go fish or even slapjack. Cards were strictly taboo in the Yang house. Not only had I never played cards, but I’d never played chess or checkers or backgammon or any other game that might become a gateway to gambling. My father didn’t allow it.

  “For five generations, we Yangs have known gambling is for fools,” he’d say. “No one ever gambled their way into riches.”

  That’s not to say I didn’t bend my father’s rules a time or two. When I was a boy in Laos, I would hustle my friends out of their marbles, which were carved by scratching small river rocks against big rocks.

  The first time we did this, my buddies asked me how many they should make.

  “Only two.”

  “Why?”

  “More than two is bad luck. Don’t you know anything? That’s why God gave you only two nuts.”

  Since most Hmong are very superstitious, my buddies believed me. I knew they would. That’s why when they weren’t around, I went to the river by myself and made as many marbles as I could carry.

  Our homemade marbles never lasted long. When my buddies’ marbles broke in half, I’d pull some out from my stash. “I have a few extra that I collected from the last time we played. Tell you what. I’ll give you two new ones in exchange for you doing my chores today.”
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  My buddies had no choice but to make the trade. They could never hike all the way to the river, scratch out new marbles, and make it back to play before the sun set. No one ever caught on to the fact that I had rigged the game against them. I preferred to think of it as doing good business. I certainly didn’t think of it as gambling. With twenty extra marbles hidden away, my game was anything but a gamble.

  My hustling days would end when my family left for America. My father’s rules would not. If you were a Yang, you did not play cards or any game that might ultimately lead to gambling. End of discussion.

  Even after I grew up and moved out on my own, I never took up cards. To be honest, I never gave them a thought.

  One Saturday night in 2005, my wife and I collapsed on the sofa in front of the television. If this had been a normal Saturday night, Sue would’ve been at work in one of the local casinos and I would’ve been in the back bedroom reading a book after finally getting our six kids off to bed.

  But this particular Saturday came at the end of a tiring weekend. Some cousins from the Fresno area had come on Friday to spend the weekend with us in Temecula. My wife and I had taken time off work to spend the days with them.

  Everyone who lives in Southern California gets to play tour guide for family who come to visit from outside the area. Like traffic and earthquakes, it’s simply part of Southern California life. We’d been running around Coronado Beach and the rest of the region, and we were exhausted.

  My cousins planned to leave the next morning and had headed off to bed early. Our six children were worn out, and they, too, had gone to bed without so much as a peep. That meant Sue and I finally had some time alone, just the two of us. For parents of young children, such moments are rare indeed. For parents of six children, they’re next to nonexistent.

  It was much too late to think about going out to a movie or restaurant, so Sue and I cuddled up on the sofa. I picked up the remote and flipped through channels, looking for something we could watch together before going to bed.

  “What do you want to watch, Mommy?” In Hmong culture, couples with children usually call one another Mommy and Daddy.

  “I don’t care. Let’s see what’s on.”

  “Okay,” I said and kept flipping through channels. “Hmmm, this looks interesting.” I’d come to channel 144, ESPN.

  “No, Daddy, keep going.”

  “I will, I will,” I said, but I never did.

  Sue let out a sigh.

  I, on the other hand, was in the process of getting hooked. I’d never played poker or watched anyone play until tonight, when I came upon ESPN’s broadcast of the World Series of Poker final table on this Saturday night in the fall of 2005.

  The longer I watched, the more fascinated I became. I could tell right away the real game was only partially about the cards being dealt. I enjoyed the way players applied pressure by placing their bets in certain ways. While there’s a lot of luck involved in the turning of the cards, these successful players weren’t just lucky. They had to think, to study their opponents as well as the cards.

  In Texas Hold ’Em, I saw a game, a sport, that seemed tailor-made for me. And for someone who doesn’t enjoy many sports and is 5 feet 2, my options were limited.

  “Daddy.” Sue snapped me back into the moment of our quiet evening together. “Let’s see what else is on.”

  If Sue had grabbed the remote, the television would already have been on HGTV. Any other night I probably would have switched to it for her. However, the thought of watching a couple from Long Beach try to choose between three houses was not nearly as appealing to me as the action unfolding at the final table of the previous year’s World Series of Poker.

  “Just a couple more minutes, Mommy. I promise. This is so interesting.”

  “I’m glad it is to you. Can I have the remote?”

  We carried on variations of this conversation for nearly an hour.

  Finally I stood, remote in one hand, pointing at the television with the other. “I can do this, Mommy. I can do this. And when I win, I will use the money for good.”

  My wife didn’t say a word. She didn’t have to. After my grand announcement, Sue gave me the look husbands dread, that look of disappointment and disapproval that said to me, Jerry, don’t even think of going there.

  I hate to say what I did next. You will probably think I’m the worst husband in the world. When I saw that look on my wife’s face, I started giggling. I couldn’t help myself.

  Oh my. So much for our quiet time of cuddling on the sofa.

  Sue shook her head and rolled her eyes. She wasn’t amused, and she meant business.

  Here I was, announcing I was not only going to take up poker but planned to win its biggest tournament in the world.

  Sue didn’t have to say anything. After eleven years of marriage, I knew exactly what she was thinking: Jerry, we have six kids, a mortgage, and a car payment. How can you even think about throwing away our hard-earned money like this?

  I stopped giggling and sat next to her, closed my mouth, and didn’t say another word. However, I did leave the television on channel 144.

  My wife sighed. “How much longer do you plan on watching this?”

  I pressed the guide button. “It’s over at eleven, so just a little while longer. I really want to see who wins.”

  Another sigh. About fifteen minutes later, Sue stood up, stretched, and said, “I’m tired. I’m going to bed. Are you coming?”

  “I’ll be right behind you as soon as this is over.”

  “I’ll probably be asleep when you come to bed.” She gave me a quick kiss and walked toward our bedroom.

  I didn’t mention poker to my wife again for a few weeks, until she brought it up.

  “What’s that thick book you’re reading?” she said to me one night.

  I was sitting at a small desk in our bedroom, where I often did late-night reading for work. “This?”

  “Yes. That doesn’t look like one of your normal books.”

  “It’s, uh, it’s called Super System by Doyle Brunson.”

  “Super System? What kind of book is that?”

  I sort of cleared my throat, swallowed hard, then said, “It’s a, uh, a poker book.” In fact, this book is considered the book on how to play poker. I’ve heard all the pros got mad at Brunson back when he wrote it in the 1970s because he gave away so many of their secrets.

  “Daddy,” Sue said, “you know how much I hate gambling. Almost every night at the casino, people play at my blackjack table and lose their grocery money for the following week. Or worse. And I see what that does to them while I deal the cards. They don’t want to go home after they lose; they don’t want to have to explain to their spouses why they won’t be able to pay any of their bills for a long time. I cannot bear the thought of you going down that same road.”

  “Mommy, believe me, I would never do anything like that. I don’t plan on becoming a gambler. Right now, I find the game of poker interesting, and I want to learn more about it. That’s all.”

  “Okay,” she said, but I could still see the fear in her eyes.

  I didn’t press the issue, but I had been serious when I’d made my announcement that Saturday night. I also knew I had a lot to learn. On the nights when my wife worked, and after all our children were in bed, I flipped through the satellite channels until I found poker. Instead of watching like a fan, I took notes. I also paid attention to the announcers’ comments, especially Mike Sexton’s and Vince Van Patten’s from the World Poker Tour.

  And I read books about poker. In addition to Doyle Brunson’s book, I read Phil Hellmuth’s Play Poker Like the Pros, which I’d heard was also required reading for anyone serious about poker. It was as if I’d gone back to school except now, instead of my college and grad school biology and psychology classes, my subject was poker.

  The more I read and watched, the more convinced I became that this was the sport for me. However, I never betrayed my wife’s trust in me. My
involvement in poker would not go beyond reading books and watching televised matches if my wife remained opposed to the idea of my playing in a tournament or cash game.

  After a month and a half of studying the game, I presented my plan. “Mommy, you know I’m disciplined with money. You know I never take funds we need as a family and waste them. We both work too hard for that.”

  She agreed.

  “So here’s what I want to do. I would like to try my hand at poker. I really think I can be successful at this game. I want to take 5 percent of my take-home pay each week, just $50, and use that to enter some tournaments. I promise you, I won’t spend more than this. In fact, that is the only money I’ll take with me into the card room when I play.”

  My wife knew I was telling the truth. “Okay, Daddy, you can do this. I’m behind you. You’ve been successful at everything else you’ve done. I know you can do this as well.”

  This was a special moment for me. Her trust meant everything to me. Now I just needed to get in the game.

  4

  Vegas or Bust

  When I won the World Series of Poker in 2007, I stunned everyone in the Amazon Room of the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino, along with ESPN’s announcers and the experts at the poker magazines. Yet probably no one was more surprised than the poker players who competed against me in my very first tournament in the fall of 2005. I spent most of that day completely lost, making one rookie mistake after another.

  At one point, one of the players at my table turned to me and said, “This isn’t a kiddy game, you know, buddy. Maybe you should go home and learn how to play before you enter a tournament.”

  I have to admit, this gentleman was right. I probably should have gone home and studied a little more before I tried playing in a tournament, even one with a $25 entry fee, or buy-in. Though I’d read several books about poker and watched hours of tournaments on television, I’d paid so much attention to strategy that I’d failed to pick up some of the basics of the game, especially the terminology.