Poker Player Of The Year, JC Tran

The pros have voted, and Tran is the man for ’07
BY ERIC RASKIN

THREE MONTHS DOES NOT A FULL YEAR MAKE. But if it did, J.C. Tran would have won the Player of the Year Award in the biggest landslide since Reagan vs. Mondale.

The way the Sacramento-based poker pro began his year was nothing short of jaw-dropping. On January 20, he celebrated his 30th birthday by qualifying for the final table of the WPT World Poker Open in Tunica, Mississippi. Though he was bounced in sixth place the next day, he bounced right back by reaching another WPT final table a month later, finishing second in February’s L.A. Poker Classic. And one month after that, Tran found himself at yet another final table at the World Poker Challenge in Reno, Nevada, and this time there was no settling for second or sixth. Tran won the whole thing.
Between January 21 and March 25, Tran made three WPT final tables (many top pros go their whole careers without reaching three WPT final tables), won one title, and pocketed $1.95-million. Add in another first-place finish, at a $3,000 buy-in event at Bellagio on April 10, and Tran wasn’t just the leading candidate for Player of the Year; he was practically a shoo-in to win with almost nine months of action remaining on the calendar.

So how did it turn out that the 2007 ALL IN Player of the Year voting was the tightest in the three-year history of the award, with Tran winning by a margin of less than one first-place vote? It probably had a little something to do with the extraordinary year enjoyed by runner-up Bill Edler, who won both a World Series bracelet and a WPT title. But it also had something to do with a summer slump that hit Tran. Though he cashed in the WSOP Main Event (493rd place, good for $25,101), he reached no final tables at the Series and, in fact, didn’t score a single six-figure cash between April 11 and December 9.

Heading into the final $5,000 buy-in event at the Five Diamond World Poker Classic at Bellagio on December 10, Tran had lost control of the Player of the Year race. His amazing start to the year had been almost forgotten. He needed to make something dramatic happen.

And that’s just what he did, winning that $5K tournament, adding $523,075 to his bankroll, and validating the argument that he was the top poker player of 2007. “Even in my own mind, if I was to vote and I was allowed to vote for myself, if I hadn’t won that event at Five Diamond, I wouldn’t have voted for myself,” Tran told ALL IN. “If I didn’t finish the year strong, I wouldn’t deserve it. But winning that event—not just coming close, but actually winning it—that tells everyone, ‘Hey guys, I’m still here.’ Finishing the year strong matters.

“Of course, a good start is always important too. I had such a good start, everyone thought I was going to win Player of the Year in every publication, automatically. But I told everyone, ‘You guys are wrong. It’s not even close to being over. There’s a lot of poker left to be played, and there are a lot of great players out there that can just make a run anytime.’”

Different players made different runs at different times; obviously, Edler’s was the strongest, but names like David Pham, Scott Clements, Jonathan Little, and Annette Obrestad injected themselves into the mix at various points throughout the year. Ultimately, though, the voters liked the guy who started strongest (by far) and then finished with an exclamation mark.

And for Tran, receiving those votes from his peers—this year’s panel included everyone from Phil Gordon to Gavin Smith to Greg Raymer to Vanessa Rousso to Joe Sebok—is tremendously satisfying and meaningful to him.

“Within the eyes of the pros, to get voted for by the people that we play with day in and day out, that’s an honor because it shows that I’m getting respect from these guys,” Tran said. “I mean, everyone has their own point system, and I don’t know if one is the correct point system. But I feel like getting voted for by my peers is important.”

Tran’s year essentially broke down into three segments: the incredible early run, the struggles at and after the World Series, and the December push that revived his POY hopes. As you might expect, it’s the January-to-April streak that Tran remembers most fondly.

“That was the best stretch of poker I’ve ever played—and it was the best run I’ve ever had,” he humbly acknowledged. “You play better poker when you get better cards. When you go through the struggle of not getting cards, it’s frustrating, you make more mistakes, you lose your patience. But when you’re playing well, you’re making correct decisions, your timing’s good, and cards are coming in, all that adds up. It builds your confidence, you’re in a groove, and it’s pretty hard to stop you.”

On the flipside, there was Tran’s WSOP experience. Despite managing his third Main Event cash in the last four years, the whole six weeks at the Rio were a major letdown.

“My World Series was a huge disappointment. It’s not because of what a great start I had in ’07; it’s because it’s the World Series, and I always have high expectations because the fields are softer, and this is where you need to win. It’s like the playoffs. You have to bring your ‘A’ game. I came in there and I played plenty of events, but honestly, I think I struggled because I was burnt out. There were a couple of tournaments where I got down to two tables and I was either second in chips or the chip leader, and I didn’t even make the final table. I can’t blame it on cards, I can’t blame it on bad beats. I blame it on myself. I wasn’t prepared mentally, physically, and I forced a lot of things.”

Judging by his track record, though, Tran doesn’t screw up like that very often. Maybe he didn’t play as well for a few months in the middle of the year as he’d have liked, but these numbers tell you everything you need to know about J.C. Tran: In ’04, he earned $769,051 in tournaments; in ’05, he made $811,109; in ’06, the number was $1,167,313; and in ’07, he cashed out $2,914,502. Yes, that’s right—his financial figures have gone up in each of the last four years. In a game as volatile as poker, there are not a lot of players who can make that claim.

Of course, it sets the bar quite high for 2008, but the confident Tran nevertheless has established hitting the $3-million mark as one of his goals for the year ahead. He’s also aiming to have a much better WSOP than he did in ’07, and he’s locked in on winning the L.A. Poker Classic this year, after his heartbreaking second-place finish a year ago.

Ironically, though, he’ll be looking to achieve these goals playing less tournaments than he did in ’07.
“I won’t be playing as many prelims this year as I was the last few years,” he said. “I want to take more time off, not force myself to go from casino to casino to casino without even making a stop at home. This year, I want to have a week or two break in between events.

“I play too much, and I really want to try to focus on switching over to cash games. I played some cash games this past year, and I enjoyed it every time I played it. And I can’t say that for tournaments. You can only really enjoy tournaments when you do well. I still love tournament poker, but I don’t love it enough to want to play every day. “Plus,” he added, “I like to have a life outside of poker.”

Fair enough, J.C. Even the Poker Player of the Year has a right to be more than just a poker player.

The Player of the Year Voting
We asked our 19 panelists to cast votes for their top five choices for Poker Player of the Year, in order, and we weighted the votes as follows: Ten points for a first-place vote, five for second, three for third, two for fourth, and one for fifth. Panelists were asked to consider cash-game results but to put an emphasis on tournaments, and to consider all varieties of poker but to put an emphasis on Hold ’Em. It was an extraordinarily close race, with both J.C. Tran and Bill Edler receiving five first-place votes, and with both men being named on 16 of the 19 ballots. Ultimately, Tran’s greater number of second-place votes proved the difference. Here were the final tallies (with the number of first-place votes in parentheses):

1. J.C. Tran 88 (5)
2. Bill Edler 82 (5)
3. David Pham 66 (3)
4. Jonathan Little 38 (1)
5. Phil Ivey 20 (2)
6. Freddy Deeb 19 (1)
7. Scott Clements 18
8. Annette Obrestad 14
9. (tie) Phil Hellmuth 10 (1)
9. (tie) Alex Kravchenko 10 (1)
Also receiving votes: Chip Reese, Roy Winston, Tom Schneider, David Singer, John Hennigan, Allen Cunningham, Ted Lawson, Lee Markholt, Jerry Yang, Andrew Black, Bruno Fitoussi, Gavin Griffin, Kirk Morrison, Lee Nelson, Erik Seidel, Kenny Tran