Why are vietnamese players so damn good

[bobdogbobdog]

Kenny Tran, Scotty, Men the Master, JC Tran, Tuan Le ..etc etc

Am i noticing a trend here ?

[EWS87]

theres alot of really bad ones u never heard of im sure

[Quanah Parker]

School of hard knocks is a great teacher.

[NLfool]

Asians tend to be pretty smart and guile + viets love to gamble + some of 2nd generation don't have money so they must suceed?

[ludawg23]

A lot of these guys are great at math and have pure instinct.

Sadly, gambling runs in their blood and many are complete degens. I know a lot of viet gamblers who have lost their homes, families due to divorce and their lives because they can't get away from the blackjack/pai gow tables.

[Nick Rivers]

Immigrants in America tend to be among the best and brightest from their country of origin. It takes a lot of smarts to not only survive in Vietnam, but to be successful enough to get to America. This kind of survival instinct and natural intelligence is a great bonus when it comes to poker.

I should note, too, that Vietnamese tend to naturally excel in other areas of gambling as well. I have routinely seen them finding advantages at blackjack, slots, and video poker, probably without ever having read a book on the games in question. They find machines with errant pays, or figure out how to make money at bankable slots, or find table games where errant procedures can be exploited for a player advantage. Most people are oblivious to these sorts of opportunities when they walk through a casino, but plenty of Vietnamese people figure out edges. This implies there is probably something fundamentally different about the Vietnamese outlook on gambling than the American outlook. In America, we grow up learning "the house always wins" and "gambling is bad." This is probably not the case in Vietnam, where "the house" is just another corporation and, as anyone can tell you, every corporation has its leaks. If you're inclined to be vigilant about these leaks all the time, you will find them where complacent first-worlders don't. The same goes for poker, where every player has a leak, and where the game itself is not bad or good, just a game. They are not plagued by the guilt and disapproval that comes with gambling, and they are not prone to self-defeating psychoses that can subconsciously disrupt the ability of the western gambler to make optimal decisions.

Of all the ethnicities I commonly see in the gambling world, I have to give the most props to the Vietnamese success stories. These are generally self-made people who have come up from a tough background and survived on their personal resources and wits. Some of the toughest live opposition I've encountered has been from Vietnamese players.

[salesbeast]

Cause they are lag tards that don't fold many hands.

I'm in Vancouver and they will slurp bowls of noodle soup at the table and I swear one day I am going to jump across and stick the chop sticks in one of there necks!

[PokerHatesMe]

cuz they have to be the greatest! Admit It !

But it's a toss up between Kenny and BarryOG1 for best Vietnamese player ever.

[Dire]

They all learn from their mothers who are all taught by Barry Greenstein. Win win for everybody.

[CheckCheckFold]

Gambling is ingrained in Vietnamese culture. I remember when I was around 5 until 10 years old, Chinese New Year was my favorite time of the year.

The tradition is that adults give kids money to gamble! I bow and politely says Cam On (thank you) to accept the money given in red envelopes and then I'd take off to the streets where there are all kinds of gambling games.

I'd run from stand to stand making bets. Then at New Year's Eve, we'd have a big blackjack game where like 10+ family members from grandma to grandsons and cousins and aunts all play.

Growing up like this I can't help but have an intuition for making bets and understanding odds.

Also, since Vietnamese here are recent immigrants, we are obviously risk takers. Vietnamese in the US are like the cream of the crop from Vietnam born and raised to be the best at gambling.