Interview With Soi Nguyen

As the only amateur at this year’s WSOP final table, Soi Nguyen has his work cut out for him come November. But the same could have been said this summer when he plopped down the Main Event’s $10,000 entry fee, hoping his limited experience (just a handful of sessions in the past several years) would be enough to get him past the bubble. Now that Soi’s blown past even his own expectations, THP caught up with him to hear the story of his impressive ride and find out how he hopes to win it all this fall.

So how does it feel to be the only guy at this year’s final table with a real job?

I really think my whole life experience and lack of poker experience may be a real advantage for me. In life, just like poker, there are a lot of lessons to be learned, man. I don’t have the table experience of running hands through my head as some other players do. But my job on a daily basis is to assess my department and streamline our processes to make us more effective and efficient. And the way I do that is assessing the skills and weak points of my staff. I kind of do that at a poker table, too, and if I sit there long enough, I’ll pick up their abilities and the way they play their hands.

How does it feel to be in your shoes right now - exciting, intimidating, terrifying?

It’s very exciting... but it’s a little weird. I walked through a cardroom last week because one of my buddies got pretty deep in a local tournament, and this one guy did a double-take and then a triple-take because I was on the current cover of Cardplayer magazine. It’s a little overwhelming at this point. All my family and friends have been really supportive, and my boss is maybe the most supportive person for me right now. I’m back on the job now, but he said, "Dude, go do your poker thing, and there’s always going to be a desk here for you."

So much has been said about the 2010 WSOP being your fourth live tournament - how much poker do you have in your background?

Well, to be honest, in the past three years, I’ve probably been to the cardroom three or four times at most. When I was 23 or 24, I went to play cards on the weekends for about a year and a half. And when we were kids, we used to play home games with $20 buy-ins. I had very limited poker experience. I’m starting to play online now, but prior to the WSOP, I only played like an hour a month or so. When I tell people these stories, everybody says, "It’s impossible. You’ve gotta play a lot of hands and get a lot of experience to make it deep in any tournament. It just comes with practice." Honestly, I don’t know how I made it this far. Every day, I just played level by level, hand by hand.

Where did you get your basic poker education?

Mostly I learned playing with friends in home games as a kid. I guess the best way to learn something is to lose first. Then when poker became more mainstream on TV, I watched and put myself in their shoes and tried to understand how they made their decisions. I haven’t read one poker book yet, and I also didn’t know who a lot of the pros were. Like Theo Jorgenson - I just knew he was the chip leader. I didn’t know that he’d recently taken a WPT event and is this well-known player. I think it kind of worked to my advantage because I wasn’t intimidated and just played the hand I was dealt and the person in front of me.

How did you get your seat in the tournament?

I paid the $10,000. Like I said, I never take time off work, so I didn’t have time to play a satellite or anything. I hadn’t taken a vacation in like ten years, and I figured that taking a nice vacation this year would have cost ten grand after hotels and food for a couple weeks, so why not take that money and see what I can do at the World Series of Poker? Whenever I do something, I always want to do it big. My friends were like, "Come out and play a few smaller events, and maybe you can get into a satellite for the Main Event..." But I didn’t have time for that. I figured I’d just give it a shot.

How far did you realistically hope to go?

I would have considered cashing a moral victory, to be honest with you. I figured I’d invested $10,000 into this thing, and the first cash was like $19,000 - almost double your money. If I’d been short-stacked, I would have been completely content with cashing in this tournament, but when we got to the bubble, I was well over the average chip stack. So, my goal was not just to cash - my goal was to chip up while other people were protecting their small stacks.

Were there any moments when the magnitude of it all hit you?

For the first 10 minutes every single day, I was nervous. But then the poker emotions took over, and I didn’t care about the cameras or the reporters or who was at my table. I was just playing poker. It really got intense for me after the hand with Theo. We went to dinner, and my friend Nam Le was like, "Dude, I know you don’t take poker seriously, but it’s what I do for a living. And I’d give up almost all my poker accomplishments up until now just to be in the position you’re in right now." At that point, I think there were about 40 players left, and I was the chip leader. That’s when it kinda hit me, like, "Wow."

This was one hell of a crash course in tournament play - what did you learn?

The biggest thing I had to overcome was laying down good hands. Two times back to back I had to lay down pocket queens with someone check-raising me. When I play in home games, there’s no way I’m going to let that hand go. But it’s a long tournament, and it’s all about survival. I made the right decision, too, because both guys showed me - one had flopped a flush and the other had two pair. I think that’s the toughest thing I learned to do, was to lay it down even when I think maybe I have the best hand.

So now that you have this layoff for the next few months, what are you going to do with all that time?

I’m not going to play poker like a madman, but I’m going to play because I need the table experience. I need to get involved in situations and learn from them. But I don’t want to get burned out.

You’re already a millionaire, have you thought of what you’ll do with your winnings?

Well, they already paid us our ninth-place money, and the only things I did were to pay off my car loan and give my mom some money. I’ve been eating well, but that’s nothing new - I always eat well. I haven’t made any sick purchases. I want to get a house, but I’m waiting until after November to decide exactly what house that’s going to be... there’s a big difference between $800,000 and $8.9 million.