A Prince At Peace

Done grinding and more grounded, Scotty Nguyen basks in the glow of a great year at the tables
BY JONATHAN GROTENSTEIN

“I ain’t like that no more. I ain’t the same, Ned. Claudia, she straightened me up, cleared me of drinkin’ whiskey and all. Just ’cause we’re goin’ on this killing, that don’t mean I’m gonna go back to bein’ the way I was.”

—William Munny (as played by Clint Eastwood), Unforgiven

IF POKER HAS A ROCK STAR, it’s Scotty Nguyen. His jet black hair remains long, his face shaded by what have become his signature tinted glasses, his body—still sinewy at age 44—perpetually draped in flashy bling. He’s also blessed with a rock star-sized ego.

“I’m the number-one fan favorite!” proclaims Nguyen. “It don’t matter where I play. I’m the home team, you know, baby? Even when I go to England, everyone cheers for me. I go to Paris, everyone cheers for me.”

It’s not bragging, as the expression goes, if it’s true. A propensity to speak of oneself in the third person, most often to proclaim one’s unparalleled awesomeness, while punctuating every other sentence with the word “baby,” would doom most players to a life of constant ridicule. In Nguyen’s case, however, it’s widely accepted as part of the package. An entertaining and often dangerous package. Few players electrify a room more than Nguyen. Fewer still are able to outplay him. “Scotty will go down as one of the best tournament players of all-time,” asserted fellow pro Howard Lederer. “His tournament record is pretty spectacular.”

Or even very spectacular. Over the last 16 years, Nguyen has cashed in more than 240 tournaments, earning four World Series bracelets and a World Poker Tour title along the way. He’s coming off what might be (save for one brief but horrible meltdown) his best WSOP ever—including the year he won the whole thing. He still knows how to take over a table, if not with cards, then with charisma.

He’s not the same Scotty Nguyen, however, who won the 1998 WSOP Championship, a chattering, hard-drinking poker gunslinger. He’s still a chatterer, and certainly still a drinker, but something more complicated has crept into his persona. He’s no longer in it for the fight, or at least not the daily grind. He sticks to the big buy-in tournaments—$5,000 or higher—and will rarely, if ever, sit down to a side game. With more than $7.5-million in tournament winnings and a comfortable endorsement deal with Oklahoma-based Cherokee Casinos, he plays less for a living than for his love for poker

“I want to win,” said Nguyen, “but if I don’t, I still live good.” He’s also discovered the ability to place poker on a second tier behind his wife, kids, and home. Yes, “The Prince Of Poker” has been domesticated. Which is not the same thing as saying he’s been wussified. Home life, if anything, seems to have made him an even more dangerous poker player.

***
Thuan “Scotty” Nguyen’s remarkable life story has been well-documented: born in Nha Trang, Vietnam, one of 15 children raised in the midst of the war; convinced by his mother, somewhere around his 12th birthday, to board a boat for America; a new life with a host family in Chicago, then Costa Mesa, California, but it took Las Vegas, on a gambling trip with a group of friends, for Scotty to find his new home.

The friends returned to California, but he remained behind, securing employment as a busboy, then a poker dealer at Harrah’s. He’d make between $150 and $300 during his shift, switch to playing, and generally lose what he’d earned. When he managed to win some, he’d quit poker in favor of craps, blackjack, and sports betting. If there was something left after that, well, there were always women, alcohol, and drugs. Going broke, to Nguyen, was as familiar as air. “I didn’t know how to manage my money,” he confessed. “You remember this: Poker never break me. Only Scotty Nguyen break himself.”

His poker, however, continued to improve, providing him with shelter from his other vices. Nguyen modeled his game after another hard-living poker player. “Growing up, the only I guy wanted to be was Stu Ungar. The year he passed away, I had a chance to play with him a lot. [Living] the dream, you know, baby?” Nguyen’s continuing success, however, led to grander aspirations. “Before, I want to be like Stu Ungar. But after I played with him? I wanted to be Scotty Nguyen. One day, Scotty Nguyen’s name bigger than Stu Ungar!”

Nguyen, young gun that he was, hoped to make his name by outplaying his idol on a public stage, but fate had a different idea. Ungar, just a few months away from turning up dead in a motel room, was a last-minute no-show to the 1998 Main Event, thus missing Nguyen’s ascension to world champion (as well as his delivery of tournament poker’s greatest line, “You call, gonna be all over, baby!”)
“When Stu passed away, [not winning the title against him was] the only thing I regret,” recalled Nguyen. “So in my head, it’s just like, ‘Scotty, just go out there and be you, and be bigger. Make yourself a name.’ Every year, bigger and better. Nothing less, baby.”

Today, Nguyen finds himself on the other side of the equation. “A lot of young kids these days, they look up to me,” he said. “Kids, nine or 10 years old, come over and tell me a story about their home games. They take turns every weekend—who’s going to be Scotty Nguyen this week?”

And just as Nguyen once gunned for the stars, a new generation of younger players are gunning for him. “The young guns, they know how to play poker. They bet aggressive. They know exactly what they’re doing.” Nguyen clearly recognizes himself in their faces, and has already lived through the hard lessons they almost certainly will face. “Sometimes, you can get too cocky. Some young gun will score a million dollars. They just go out there and play the biggest game, one they don’t have any business being involved in at all. I just want to remind them to be careful. A lot of rocks out there. Sharks out there. A lot of good players. Don’t underestimate the older, baby!”

***
“I’ve worked hard to make a name,” Nguyen admitted. “A personality. That is so important.” Given his long-term success, his “personality”—a loud and incessant stream of friendly discourse, fueled by plenty of beer—might be viewed as a calculated attempt to unsettle his opponents.
“I am sure his chattiness is very effective at getting amateurs off their game,” observed Lederer, adding, “It has no effect on pros. As for the drinking thing, all players figure out a way to win, and it seems like he has figured out a way to win while on a good beer buzz.”

Nguyen, however, is dismissive of any suggestion that he might be acting. “I get along with everyone. Don’t matter what color. Ugly. Pretty. I always give them a smile. Because that’s me. I love people. I love the game … Whatever you see on TV, that’s exactly what I’m like outside the poker game. I’m real, baby!”

Nguyen may be the same person at the table as he is away from it, but one thing that isn’t the same is how much time he’s spending at the table. That has decreased significantly of late. Part of the reason is a diminished appetite for the blood-letting involved in high-stakes poker, especially cash games. “I’m the friendliest poker player out there,” he said. “In the cash games, you cannot play friendly. You end up getting hurt.” He has also discovered a new commitment to family. Nguyen’s first marriage ended in divorce, scattering five kids around the country. He seems determined not to make the same mistakes with his new family, wife Julie, two young children, and a pet monkey named “Jackpot.”

Nguyen credits Julie with bringing balance to his life. “She helps me a lot. She don’t like to go out. She don’t drink. She don’t gamble. Most time, my off-time, I just stay home with her, kick back, watch TV, play my videogames, and get ready to play poker.” He’s found something that looks a lot like domestic bliss, and is willing to push poker aside in order to maintain it. “When the family is not happy—especially when the wife is not happy—you cannot win. You might as well stay home. You’ll give your money away. I never go play when something is not perfect at home.”

Nguyen believes that emphasizing family over poker has made him a better player. “When I walk out of the house, and everyone is happy and has got what they need, that gives me the strength to go out there and do what I do best.” Putting fewer hours in at the tables has also helped Nguyen to avoid the kind of burnout that comes along with 20-odd years of bad beats. “Every time when I play, I’ve missed it. You know, when you miss the game, you love the game. That’s the only way you win.”

***
Scotty Nguyen did not cash at the 2006 World Series of Poker. This may not seem like such a big deal, except that Scotty Nguyen always cashes at the World Series of Poker, having done so every year since 1995. He entered the 2007 Series with a chip on his shoulder and a renewed desire to prove himself. By almost every standard, he succeeded.

“I had my best World Series this year,” he said. “I’m in the zone. I’m focused. Plus, I have my wife behind me.” Entering the Main Event, he’d already cashed five times, including a second-place and a fourth-place finish, and showed no signs of cooling off as the opportunity to win a second world championship hurtled toward him.

“For six days, seven days, every day I improved. ‘Scotty’s right there, Scotty’s right there.’” Winning tournaments, however, requires peaking at the right time, which is exactly what Ngyuen seemed to be doing when he eliminated Ray Henson in 12th place, building his stack to $15.5-million, entrenching him among the chip leaders and, in all likelihood, enabling a downhill coast to the final table. “I was doing so good, and then … ” Nguyen sighs. “Someway, somehow, one of the player get into my skin. And I start getting personal for no reason at all.”

He won’t name the offending party, but it hardly takes a mind-reader to establish that it was Philip Hilm—a 30-year-old young gun from Denmark who separated Nguyen from his stack over the course of three critical hands. Having crippled Hilm earlier in the day when he turned a full house, Nguyen took a stab at a queen-high flop holding ace-high. Hilm, whose middle-pair blossomed into trips on the river, was unable to extract any additional money out of Nguyen, but the encounter seemed to unsettle him more than it should have. “When I look back now,” said Nguyen, “I say, ‘What did he do to me?’ Nothing. He just play his game … Why did I have to get personal?”

A few hands later, Nguyen, holding A-Q, had the misfortune to flop top pair against Hilm, who had flopped a set. Nguyen certainly could have gotten away from the hand when a king fell on the turn, leading Hilm to fire a bet, but instead moved all-in, drawing dead, and lost most of his stack. A few hands later, Nguyen used a flush draw and the chips he had left in an attempt to push Hilm off top pair. Hilm didn’t budge, the board didn’t flush, and The Prince Of Poker was eliminated in 11th place.
“You know, baby, it’s haunted me until now,” Nguyen confessed. “I close my eyes and I see it … It makes me so sad, so angry, so disappointed, because I just blew the biggest chance all the players out there dream of.” After letting out a sigh, he continued. “Mistake is all good as long as you learn from it. I learn from it, baby. The lesson is priceless.”

Nguyen doesn’t spend too long dwelling on the past; there are too many things left to do. “My goal is win every main event out there at least once. But the World Series, my goal is win again. I will prove that to you in ’08. Young gun, legends, I don’t care. When I sit down at the poker table, baby, they watch out for me. I don’t be looking out for them. Scotty Nguyen is first, baby!”

It’s certainly possible. But you get the sense that if he isn’t first, that will be okay, too. “I have my wife behind me,” he said. “Julie is a big part of what my success is. Whatever I do, win, lose, I come home, she always comforts me.”

And his enthusiasm spikes as he imagines another goal for himself, the opportunity to face a different young gun:
“Twenty years from now, when my youngest son is grown up, I want him to sit at the same final table as me at the World Series. Kody Nguyen, you’ve got to remember that name. Twenty years from now, baby, he’s going to be the next World Series champion!”
How appropriate it would be if Scotty Nguyen’s “baby” does indeed carry on his legacy.

ALL-TIME NGUYEN-INGS
Nguyen’s $7.5-million in lifetime tournament winnings places him in pretty stellar company. Ignoring the last three WSOP Main Event champions (each of whom made $7.5-million or more for winning one crummy tournament), only seven players have earned more: Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth, Allen Cunningham, T.J. Cloutier, Carlos Mortensen, Phil Ivey, and that other Nguyen (no relation), Men “The Master.”

SCOTTY NGUYEN: RANDOM FACTS
You probably didn’t know that …
• A Google search for “Scotty Nguyen” and “hair” returns more than 600 results.
• In the Hendon Mob poker database, listing anyone who’s ever cashed in a significant poker tournament, Scotty is one of 255 players with the last name “Nguyen.”
• Nguyen used to have two pet monkeys. Today, only “Jackpot” survives. The name of the unlucky deceased? “Lucky.”