A Dreamer Living The Dream

A year after becoming a champion, Jerry Yang is still adjusting to fame and still giving back

BY JONATHAN GROTENSTEIN

THE SCENE FEELS MORE LIKE A POT-LUCK family reunion than a poker tournament. The entire room could fit neatly into the bubble tent the Rio used last year to handle the World Series’ overflow. People are mingling in small groups, laughing. A busy cocktail waitress shuttles another round of drinks—compliments of the house—to a guy who’s celebrating his birthday. There’s a kind of buzz in the air, like any minute now, the cousin who did it, the one who got drafted by the Lakers or bought out by Microsoft, is going to walk in through the front door.

And at around 5:30, he does. Jerry Yang glides onto the floor dressed in what’s become his signature uniform: dark sunglasses and a jet-black shirt and suit. He’s moving toward a microphone, where he’ll say a few words to kick off this night’s event in the Jerry Yang Tournament Series, but stops frequently to chat with the many people who greet him with warm familiarity.

Just one year ago, Jerry Yang was one of them. Then he became the world champion of poker. Tonight, he’s bringing some of that Las Vegas magic back to the Lake Elsinore Resort and Casino. It’s a $500 buy-in with a field that will barely top a hundred, but floor models hand out energy drinks, promotional junk, and cheap draft beer. The posters throughout the room—featuring the diminutive Yang flanked by two very large men—tout this five-tournament series as a chance to “Play with the Big Boys.” Men “The Master” Nguyen is here. So is WPT star J.J. Liu. At around 3 a.m., 2006 world champion Jamie Gold rolls into the room. It’s not exactly the Main Event, but tonight, it feels like the major leagues.

***

Lake Elsinore is, literally, a minor league town—the Storm, a Class A feeder to the San Diego Padres, play their home games just a few blocks from the casino. The lake itself has endured fluctuations to rival any chip stack, drying up in the 1930s, getting refilled in the ’60s, then flooding with near-biblical fury in 1980. About a 90-minute drive from L.A., the area once enjoyed a heyday among celebrities looking to escape Hollywood. Today, there’s little that’s glitzy about Lake Elsinore, save for the town motto: “Dream Extreme.”

The Lake Elsinore Resort and Casino has been around, in some form or another, since the late-’50s. In 2004, it was home to the inaugural event of the Southern California Poker Tour, a self-proclaimed “minor league” looking to televise events with buy-ins in the $200 range. The tour failed after just a few episodes because (a) not many people wanted to watch minor league tournaments, and (b) players rebelled over a proposed $25 increase in the entry-fee portion of the buy-in.

Aside from floods and the occasional shift in public sentiment, the cardroom’s greatest challenge has been the increasing competition from Indian casinos. Proposition 1A, passed by California voters in 2000, legalized Vegas-style gaming on Indian reservations, allowing neighbors like Pechanga and Rincon to use money-minters such as blackjack and slots to subsidize resort-like hotel suites and state-of-the-art poker rooms with dozens of tables.

It’s a disparity that’s helped to wipe out nearly two-thirds of the non-Indian card rooms in the state. Lake Elsinore subsists on what it can rake from its 20 or so tables. There is a pool, a restaurant, and a bar, but you’ll have to buy your sundries from a vending machine. If you want to use a gym, they have a deal with a place up the road. There are plenty of plans to improve the joint, but financial reality dictates gradual change. A long-awaited renovation of the hotel rooms on the second floor has just been completed. They’re hoping to get to the first floor later this year.

Twenty minutes south, Pechanga offers Jacuzzi suites, four-diamond amenities, eight restaurants, and a gallery of contemporary art.

Lake Elsinore has survived, in large part, by promoting itself as “California’s Friendliest Cardroom.” Which, as it turns out, is anything but a load of crap.

***

Jerry Yang’s journey to world champion could have started in this room. But it didn’t. Not exactly, anyway. A few weeks before the start of the 2007 WSOP Main Event, he entered Lake Elsinore’s $110 super-satellite and lost. He looked at his watch and realized that, if he hurried down Interstate 15, he could take one last shot at his dream, a $225 qualifier at Pechanga. “I was debating,” recalled Yang. “Do I really want to put up another $225? And having six kids, you kind of have to think twice.”

He thought or didn’t think his way into the second tournament, where he earned his seat into the Championship Event. A dream come true, save for one pesky detail: You have to vacate that seat at the end of the day and, ideally, have a bed into which you can collapse. Yang’s prize would cover the entry fee, but there was no allowance for a hotel and, as the father of six kids, little room in the family budget for any such extravagance. He pled his case to one of the higher-ups at Pechanga. “He was very generous and very kind,” remembered Yang. “Unfortunately, they couldn’t do it.”

About two weeks before the start of the Series, Yang found himself back at Lake Elsinore sharing his story with poker room manager Pat Wilmes. “Yeah!” said Wilmes. “We’ll pick up the room.” A grateful Yang promised to wear a hat and shirt to promote the casino for however long he managed to survive.

He survived, however, much longer than everyone expected, and the terrain began to shift. When Yang made the final table, Full Tilt made him an offer he knew he was going to have a tough time refusing. All he had to do was wear a hat. That, and, renege on his pact with Lake Elsinore at the moment of his peak visibility. He called Pat Wilmes.

“Pat said, ‘You know what, Jerry? You have a family … Go ahead and take the deal. I’m not going to hold anything against you. You’ve been wearing our cap and shirts throughout the tournament, we’ve seen it, and we’re very grateful to you. So go ahead and take the deal.’”

***

As unlikely as it might have seemed a year ago, Jerry Yang is kind of a rock star. “People always recognize you,” he said. “I was talking to a friend the other day. I said, ‘In order to disguise myself, I’m going to have to shave my head.’ I sign autographs almost every single day, wherever I go. To the supermarket, to the mall, or taking my kids to the park.”

And, of course, in the poker room. “Everywhere I go, I kind of feel like there’s a huge target on my back.” He laughed. “For them to even consider that is actually a great honor.”

If you’re waiting for him to start living like a rock star, well, keep waiting. He recently took his family to Napa Valley, where, out of necessity, they stayed in a $500-a-night hotel room. His kids quickly gravitated toward the video games on the flat-screen TV. Yang sat down on the bed with his wife and quietly took her hand. “This isn’t us,” he told her.

“I want to be remembered someday, many, many years from now,” Yang told ALL IN. “People will say, ‘Hey, you know what? Jerry Yang did not forget where he came from. He remembered the kindness that people gave him, have shown him.’”

There has never been a more generous world champion. In the months following his victory, he donated over $1-million of his prize money to charities. To his church. To his former employer. To his relatives in Laos. To his relatives in the States.

But there was one marker left to be paid.

“I had some other deals with other casinos who honestly offered much more money, but I decided to turn them down,” said Yang. “I wanted to support Lake Elsinore because of what they have done for me, particularly the hotel accommodation.” He spoke to Pat Wilmes. They sat down with Ted Kingston, the card room’s owner, and gave birth to the Jerry Yang No-Limit Hold ’Em Tournament Series.

The last few years have seen an explosion of big poker tournaments. There’s a $10,000 buy-in event every week or two, and a growing number of contests with $25,000 and $50,000 price tags. Yang and Lake Elsinore took a different tack. The biggest event in the Jerry Yang Series carried a $1,100 entry fee, made even more accessible by a month of satellites, and armed its players with a WSOP-esque $10,000 starting stack. The grand finale—in which a Shooting Stars-like bounty was placed on Yang’s proverbial head—cost its players only $120, with no re-buys. Despite the relatively low paydays (the biggest prize earned was under $15,000), winners were presented with trophies and engraved watches. This was big-time poker, delivered at wholesale prices.

Wilmes and his team handled the affair with Lake Elsinore’s signature pragmatism. Outdoor tents were erected to handle the overflow from the card room. When heavy rains threatened the tents, the tables were moved into the cafeteria. It was the kind of performance that would have seemed familiar to old Benny Binion, a lot more so than the current circus that we call the World Series of Poker.

Jerry Yang has reached the majors. On July 3, he’ll be one of thousands to pony up $10,000 to play in the biggest game on earth. But 200 miles away, just across the Mojave Desert, Lake Elsinore will still be playing host to the minor leagues.

Some will dream of being the next Jerry Yang. Others will be content to spend a few hours at California’s Friendliest Cardroom.

n

Jonathan Grotenstein is a writer living in Los Angeles. He is the co-author of All In: The (Almost) Entirely True History Of The World Series Of Poker, and has collaborated on books with Phil Gordon and Scott Fischman.

SIDEBAR 1:

The Champion’s Strategy

So how does the returning champion plan to defend his title?

“I plan to be aggressive at the beginning of the tournament, because I know that a lot of players will tend to wait for good cards to play,” he said. “Most players don’t want to get busted early in a tournament, therefore they will tend to be more conservative at the beginning. I will take advantage of that opportunity and attempt to accumulate chips early. Once I have accumulated a sufficient amount of chips for the day, I will tend to play tight-aggressive using my position.

“But the most important components for me are patience, discipline, courage, and faith.

“One must have the patience to play for long periods of time. One must have the discipline to fold hands when needed. One must have the courage to make tough calls when they arise. Finally, one must have faith in one’s own read on the opponents.”

SIDEBAR 2:

Defending The Title

The returning champion always comes back to the Main Event with a target on his back, which has proven a blessing for some and a curse for others. Here’s a look at the fates of the last five WSOP champs the year after they won their titles:

Robert Varkonyi Eliminated Day One

Chris Moneymaker Eliminated Day One

Greg Raymer 25th Place

Joe Hachem 238th Place

Jamie Gold Eliminated Day One