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Chez Andrew
Andrew Lam is a NAM editor and author of "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora" (Heyday Books, 2005), which recently won a PEN/Beyond Margins Award.
[ filed under: entertainment asia ] When I was a teenager a long time ago, I sometimes helped my sister Nancy who worked for a refugee resettlement program. It was her job to find those who came under her Tolstoy Foundation (a non profit org.)’s sponsorship and give them clothes and food and shelter. We greeted newly arrived refugees at the airport, some came through the Hamilton Air Force base, and these included Hmongs, Cambodians and of course many of our countrymen, Vietnamese. It was my job to take away knives – yes, some of the Hmongs carried their knives with them, essential tools from Laos, when they boarded military transports but can’t take their knives with them when they board another plane to their final destination – wisconsin, say- and I threw those knives in a basket (I should have saved them, they were hand made, and sharp!) and then it was also my job to give these newly arrived folks parkas and ski jackets – as it was to them very cold to be in America, compared to 90 degree all year round Southeast Asia, and none had more than a shirt. Then a few months after having volunteered to help these folks, I went skiing with friends in Tahoe. I walked into a casino in Reno (just to look, was too young then to gamble) and lo and behold: the first thing I noticed were dozens of these folks who still had on these charity donated jackets sitting at slot machines and blackjack tables. I did a double take: these were people who didn’t have jobs yet, who didn’t speak english yet, didn’t even buy new clothes yet, who were still receiving welfare and here they were, gambling. It was funny and ridiculous. Why i’m telling you this story is because fast forward 3 decades or so and some of these folks have become professional gamblers. Five of the those who walked away from the recent World Series of Poker after more than six weeks of gambling at the Rio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas are Vietnamese, winning a combined total of 5.3 million dollars, with Scotty Nguyen on top, with $2 Million in his pocket. In fact, Vietnamese have been dominant in the world of professional poker playing for the last decade. You see them on ESPN like some kind of sport stars (except they drink and gamble). Nguoi Viet has recently reported this story with this headline: Card Sharks.. And Wikipedia listed those professional Vietnamese players who placed very high on the on this page.
Tet, the new year celebration, is the time when everyone gambles. My fondest memories of my Vietnamese childhood is of my mother’s clan gathering in the back of our grandparent’s villa in Saigon and playing Sauter La Banque, and i was six and won lots of cash from this hat (if you lose, you have to match all the money in the hat)... To Jump the bank= to bet all.. quite exciting for a 6 years old. It was very fun with everyone – young and old -with the young, mostly kids, using their new money given to them by their elders to try to win everyon’e else’s money. The winner often then takes the losers to lunch : > to cheer them up. Children develop a keen sense of game playing and are condoned by their parents, and are often guided by their elders on how to play a better game. In fact, I spent many a summer nights with my siblings and parents playing another game called Tu Xac – same characters as in Chinese Chess – but using cards instead. My father often won and he would never give us back our money no matter how much we chldren pouted. Gambling, when played within the context of family and clan, is healthy and fun. And children develop a keen sense of opponent’s weakness, how to maneuver their positions, and of course how to cheat. But overall there’s sheer joy and not a whole lot of guilt involved in gaming itself.
The other factor that Vietnamese are known for – and I think many in Asia have this ability – is coi mat. Vietnamese read eyes, faces. My mother, for instance, is intuitive about people to the point of it being a little mystical. A friend, who owed people money, showed up at the house once when we were both just out of college. she looked at him and then pulled me aside: “he’s no good. I can tell he’s the type that borrows money from people. He’s impulsive. Don’t be too close to him.” It was kind of uncanny though I was a bit resentlful of her being so confident and condescending to someone she just met. I ended up lending him money that took years to get some back, and less than half. But then i have this ability too, and i must have learned it from her. I can sort of figure someone out – someone i just met – within a few seconds, figure out what makes them tic, what their desires are, and usually i’m right. But when I’m wrong I’m spectacularly wrong, and realize now that I probably don’t have psychic abilities, I just happen to be intuitive. Anyway I never care to gamble as an adult (odd isn’t it?) but this ability to read faces in Vietnam is something that we learned very early on as children. It is something of a survival strategy in Vietnam, I’m sure, given the fact that it is a poor country where the majority live hand to mouth despite a robust (until recently anyway) economy. To guess what someone with money wants is to benefit from that reading. No doubt it is very useful in Vegas. ;-> I once asked a friend, who’s Vietnamese and a daring gambler – he wins tens of thousands each time he goes to reno or vegas and loses just as spectacularly – why he thinks Vietnamese are such great gamblers and he laughed. “We took a great gamble when we escaped out to sea as boat people. That’s a major risk right there – so many didn’t make it. It’s only natural that some of us developed nerves of steel in America in the aftermath. What’s the possibility of losing 50 thousand dollars compared to losing your family and your own life when you sail out to open sea, hoping for the best, but bracing for the worst?” Makes sense. Side bar: Lifetime at the World Series of Poker Thang Luu Kenny Tran John ‘Razor’ Phan Scotty Nguyen J.C. Tran Watch Andrew Lam’s “My Journey Home Documentary” — |
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As a Vietnamese American writer who often addresses East-west relations, I have been asked over and over again: Why are Vietnamese so good at poker? Why indeed when many didn’t really play poker in Vietnam? I can’t claim to have the definitive answer but here’s something to think about: Vietnamese love gambling, and culturally it is not frowned upon. In fact, gambling is part of recreation for many who labored in the fields.
(The down side of this is that because it is not frowned upon in general, it is often overlooked until too late. Only someone becomes so addicted and goes off the deep end and loses his jobs and sells his car to gamble then doest it finally set alarm bells ringing.)
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