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 John Phan was born October 10,
1974 in Hue, Vietnam. When he was seven, his family was forced to flee the country due to the political unrest that followed the
Vietnam War. His large family split into two groups when they escaped on tiny boats, but only one group survived the journey.
Phan, along with 40 other refugees, endured a month on the crowded boat with barely enough food and water. The vessel, piloted
by his uncle, almost sank at one point before it was rescued by another boat that took them to a refugee camp in Hong Kong and
then the Philippines. Phan and his family finally reached the United States in 1982 and settled in Stockton, California.
John Bon Phan first got into poker when he was sixteen as a way to spend time with his family and pick up some extra money. He
started playing in the occasional home game, but quickly moved to the low-limit Holdem games in a small Northern California
card rooms. One of Phan’s close friends ran a two-table room in Stockton, where he and his friends would wait in line for
two hours each day before the room opened so they could be the first ones in and receive a $20 gaming credit.
After graduating high school, Phan enrolled at San Joaquin Delta College, but his academic days were numbered. He
continued to play poker in Stockton and didn’t have the time to take his classes too seriously. "All we did was go get
our financial aid and gamble with it," he said. "I was playing at home a lot, in low-limit games like $2-$4 and $3-$6,
and at a casino in Sacramento, where the stakes were a bit higher, like $4-$8 and $6-$12." Phan’s bankroll continued to
grow and he was already establishing himself in a class above the rest. His natural instinct was to play aggressively,
and it was working. “I was in a roomful of guys who would lay down A-Q or A-K at a $2 limit Hold'em table," he
remembers. "I knew right away that this wasn't the way to play the game.” Phan’s calculated aggression soon earned him
enough money to start playing full time, and he became a professional player at age 21.
John Phan has since become one of the most respected poker players in the world, having a reputation as both a solid
cash game and tournament player. "Basically, I developed my own game and my own style. When I play in tournaments or a
game, I want players to guess what I have. Sometimes even I don't know how I'm going to play a hand. My style deals
with each hand individually. I'll play any two cards.” Phan’s natural instincts and smart aggressive play constantly
instills fear in his opponents. He prides himself in his “recipe for success” which he calls a combination of confidence,
patience, and following his gut instincts. Phan says he will never lay kings down before the flop, and that he would rather
go home early than play it too safe. Phan admires and compares himself to
Phil Ivey and
Daniel Negreanu, saying "Essentially,
we all have the same game. By mixing it up and reading cards well, usually nobody can predict what we have.”
Phan is known for playing an unusually high number of tournaments each year, creating an exhausting but ultimately
enjoyable schedule for the poker prodigy. Although he has said that life on the road can be difficult and tiring, Phan
treats it like a business. "It’s like a job and you have to put that in your head. You have to go to work. If you don't
do well one day, you have to do better the next. That's the only way to get good. If you take things to hard, you can't
play well in the next event. This job is very stressful and you have to learn how to deal. People ask me how I can play
event after event. I just love the game.”
 Although
Phan’s tournament results impressed from early in his career, it was 2005 when “The Razor” became a household name in
the poker community. His unbelievable success that year earned him a 2nd place finish in the Player of the Year race
and over $1.1 million. In 2008, he hit another incredible run on the tournament circuit when he began the year with a
6th place finish at the World Poker Tour’s Bay 101 Shooting Star, winning $135,000. That summer, at the World Series of
Poker, Phan captured his first bracelet in the $3,000 No Limit Hold’em event, and then won another just a week later in
the $2,500 Deuce-to-Seven Triple-Draw Lowball event. His amazing World Series results made him the only player to win
two bracelets in 2008. That summer proved Phan unstoppable when he went on to place 5th in the WPT Bellagio Cup IV,
then became one of the few players in history to make back-to-back WPT final tables when he captured the $1 million
first prize at the Legends of Poker in August.
With Phan’s success has come wealth, but he hasn’t forgotten where he came from, frequently traveling back to Vietnam
to help the less fortunate. Rather than giving money to a charity or organization, Phan prefers to deliver food and
money himself, with the help of his many relatives still living in Vietnam. Every few months, they travel along the
countryside, donating supplies to small villages, homes for the elderly, homeless shelters and hospitals. When one of
his cousins recently passed away and left behind a wife and child that needed assistance, Phan not only stepped in
financially but also adopted the child, who he plans to bring to the US in a few years. Because of his generosity, his
name stands on a plaque on the wall of a Buddhist temple in Da Nang, Vietnam.
When Phan isn’t travelling the world playing in tournaments, he can usually be found playing cash games in Los Angeles,
near his home in Long Beach. It’s not uncommon to see him wearing his IPod at the table, listening to trance or hip-hop
with a drink in hand. Phan says he’ll never forget that every day is a gift. “It’s like I tell everyone, since I got
off that boat back in the early ‘80s, I was freerolling with my life.” |
