Tuan Lam

Poker player biography of Tuan Lam

Born in 1966 in the midst of the Vietnam War, Canadian player Tuan Lam never would have imagined that he would someday be able to have over $4 million in his bank account and gain this much success in the game of cards. Tuan Lam grew up in Vietnam during the country's worst military conflict, which prodded the then young Tuan to leave his homeland as soon as he became old enough to go out on his own and earn a living. He ended up in Canada, where he has lived for many years now and which he considers as his permanent home.

Tuan Lam's rags-to-riches tale

Tuan went to Canada with the original goal of finding a decent-paying job so that he would be able to send money back home. Tuan held a variety of jobs, moving from one company to the other, in search of a steady income that would be enough to ensure his and his family's subsistence. According to an interview, Tuan got into poker when a friend of his offered him a job in a casino as a dealer. During weekends, his friend would host poker games and play very small limits ranging from $5 to $10. Tuan Lam eventually joined in and that's how he said he learned about poker.

Tuan Lam admits that when he first started playing poker, he was clueless about the trades of the game as he's never gambled before. So he took it upon himself to learn about the game and bought a book by David Sklansky, which explained the basics of poker. Since then, Tuan Lam has been playing in cash games, enhancing his knowledge of, and skill for, the game. It was then in July 2007 that he went to Las Vegas to compete in the World Series of Poker $10,000 Main Event. There he was able to make it to the final table and eventually finished second out of the 6,358 players who competed in the event. This momentous second-place win allowed Tuan Lam to go home as an instant millionaire, bagging a total of $4,840,981.

Prior to that much celebrated achievement in Tuan Lam's poker career, he has also cashed two World Series of Poker events; one in 2005 and one in 2006. In the 2005 World Series of Poker $1,000 No Limit Hold' em w/ Re-buys event, he finished 76th and took home $3,290, while his 2006 WSOP $1,500 Limit Hold' em Shootout event participation resulted to a 46th-place finish and a $7,153 win. He also dabbled in online poker play before he made his multi-million dollar win.

Tuan Lam's story is that of the genuine rags-to-riches kind, which makes this Viet-Canadian player an inspiration to many. When not playing tables, Tuan Lam is perfectly contented spending time with his family. And like other poker players who use a portion of their winnings to reach out and help other people, Tuan Lam also used his winnings to help his fellow native Vietnamese. Tuan says he plans on building a temple in the village where he used to live. With total winnings estimated at well over $4.8 million, Tuan Lam is a member of Team Poker Stars Pro and plays online under the name 'TuanLam'.