Know Thyself

"They're all up in the suite," said Amnon Filippi at the base of the Bellagio elevator tower. I headed up the elevator to suite 24049. Steve Sung was playing online poker as I walked into the suite, while J.C. Tran was in a side room and Quinn Do walked out of another. Sitting on a couch in the middle of all of this was poker-tournament professional Nam Le, watching one of the first NBA games of the season. He was exhausted after busting out during the second day of play at the Caesars Palace Classic, which came on the heels of a runner-up finish at the World Poker Tour Festa al Lago event where Le won $943,215 in prize money. That win also gave him 1,850 Card Player Player of the Year points, taking his 2008 total to 3,425 and making this year the third in a row for having at least 3,000 points.

The suite at Bellagio represents a slice of Le's life on the road. It is a life that finds him surrounded by friends who are like-minded professional poker players and, Le says, a "part of the blueprint of success." These players include those mentioned above, as well as others like Danny Wong and family members Tommy Le and Tuan Le. Nam travels the tournament trail with this group of friends, and has racked up one of the most impressive tournament-poker resumes in the world for any player under 30. His lifetime winnings now amount to $5,828,765, and he has many years of poker ahead of him.

His first major-tournament win came at the 2006 WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star event, where he banked nearly $1.2 million. Since that early success, he has continued to book solid and consistent results to prove that he is a world-class player and one of the most disciplined on the felt. His biggest heartbreak also came in 2006, when he lost a heads-up battle to Mark Vos in a $2,000 no-limit hold'em event at the World Series of Poker and just missed winning his first gold bracelet. Le proceeded to win millions after 2006, as he made three more WPT final tables, and racked up 11 cashes total at WPT events and 16 cashes at the WSOP. His last big tournament win came in September when he won the Asia Pacific Poker Tour high-rollers event in Macau and took home $474,359 in prize money. This was just after Le and a few of his friends picked up sponsorship deals with the Asian Poker Tour to grow its brand in the Asian market as well as around the world.

Even though Le is closing in on $6 million in career winnings, you might not pick that up from talking to him. He is devoid of any sense of ego in all situations, and he reminds you of an athlete who knows how to "act like he has been there before" when he makes a final table or makes a deep run in a tournament.

Nam provided Card Player some insight into his personal poker strategy that many consider unique and all consider devastatingly effective.

The Poker Player on His Strategy

Ryan Lucchesi: You finished second in the 2006 Player of the Year race, 15th in 2007, and you are currently in 18th place in the 2008 race, which is definitely a testament to the consistency of your results. What is it about your game that makes you one of the most consistent performers on the tournament trail?

Nam Le: I think the main thing is that I'm always trying to learn, always trying to get better. Even with all of that tournament success, I'm still worried about winning another tournament or making another final table. I think that alone keeps me trying. I don't think I'm above the game; I don't get too bigheaded.

RL: It's safe to say that you have obtained a world-class level of knowledge about the game of poker at this point. When you say you're trying to learn things about the game to improve, what aspects of strategy does that involve?

NL: Even if you know the game, you forget things. You forget sometimes how to play ace-king. Just being around all of my friends, a lot of times when I end up helping them out with their game, I'm actually relearning things as I'm teaching them or just talking about hands. You get a feel for what's going on out there. The game is very trendy; sometimes you see a lot of people putting their stacks in with ace-king, and other times you see people smooth-call with ace-king. I think depending on where you go, from California to Vegas to the East Coast, it's the same game, but it's not the same. I notice in L.A. that it is always bet, bet, bet, and on the East Coast, it's a lot of check-call, and you can't be bluffing people on the East Coast, and with Vegas, it is always tough. You see a lot of carefully played small pots. In general, that's the difference. If you hang around with good players, you're going to gravitate to their level.

RL: How would you define your style of play?

NL: That's a hard question to answer. I get asked that all of the time, and I really don't know. I try to make the game as easy as possible for myself. I try not to make too much noise - not verbally, but the way I play. I try not to play too many hands in a row. I like to stay under the radar. As far as a certain style is concerned, I really don't know. Basically, I just play depending on the table and my position at the table. When it comes to style, I really don't think I'm hyperaggressive. I think I'm really good at timing, and I think lately that my reads have been really good. I know I'm not a math player. I mean, there's math involved in a lot of hands in the game, but I'm more of a feel player. Let's say, if I'm getting 6-to-1 on my money, and I'm a 2-to-1 dog, but I'm a 2-to-1 dog to be busted, a lot of times I would fold. It doesn't matter what the pot is, or what the price is, if I'm 2-to-1 to get knocked out of the tournament, a lot of times I'm folding. With tournaments, it's all about survival, and I think a lot of players get caught up with the size of the pot. I used to do it back in the day, too. I'd be put in a tough situation, and my last thought would be, "Wow, the pot is 200,000. If I could win this pot …" I would end up calling, and bust out. After a while, when you play enough tournaments and bust out in that way, you learn how to figure out ways not to go broke when you're supposed to go broke. A lot of people come up to me and ask about a hand, and say it is such a cold deck, but when they tell me, I'm like, no, it's not a cold deck, there's a lot of things you can do to get away from that. Basically, when I step into a tournament, I just take it one table at a time and one day at a time, and the next thing I know, I'm at the final table.

RL: You are almost always a player who consistently chips up during the course of the tournament, and while you rarely hold the chip lead, you also never make a bad call or bluff off half of your stack. Is it that you're not looking for the reasons to call that so many other players find that enables you to make consistent under-the-radar marches to the final table?

NL: It all depends. If I'm at, say, a softer table, I'm more likely to fold when I get caught in big hands or big situations because I know I can get the chips back, because the table's not really giving me too much trouble. If I'm at a table with a bunch of hyperaggressive players and I'm sandwiched between them, I'm more likely to gamble because it's going to be now or never and I'd rather just make my move now. Then again, it all depends on who's at my table, my seating position, and what tournament we're playing in. Everything is a balance. I find a balance in basically every decision I make in poker.

RL: They say in poker that your biggest opponent is always yourself. Many people would consider you the most disciplined player not only for your age, but in the world. How have you mastered your emotions at the poker table?

NL: I think I play for the right reasons. I don't play just for myself; I play for my family, I play for my friends, and … the money is good. I do play for the money, and everybody always wants respect and to be appreciated, but I don't really play for the fame. A lot of people are depending on me to do well, so I think that keeps me in line and in check.

RL: A lot of players let their egos get the best of them. They would much rather make the hero call or big bluff than play solid poker. How do you keep yourself from getting caught up in that?

NL: I'm a pretty fast learner. Back in my early days, I would make those hero calls, and bottom-pair calls, and ace-high calls, and they worked out, but the times they don't, it burns and it stings. I made sure that I let it sting, and with experience, you just learn that that's not profitable. Yeah, I could be that player, that young hotshot who makes those hero calls. In the long term, it's not good, and I know that I'll be playing this game for the rest of my life.

RL: It seems like a lot of players freak out the second their stack drops below 20 big blinds, and then they're likely to shove when any ace comes their way, no matter what the kicker.

NL: That's really understandable, but the thing with me is that early on, a lot of times I loved to play so much that I didn't care if I bubbled a tournament. Some players would be happy to bust out early as opposed to six hours later, but I'd rather be the bubble boy, because that means I had a better shot of winning a tournament. There were a lot of times that I would drive to L.A. and play in $300 events. I didn't want to drive there and then bust out in an hour and have to go home. So, I used to just sit there and hang tight, and somehow in the end I pulled off the win. So, early on, I learned that it's never over, and I think that helped me a lot. Even when I'm down to six big blinds or three big blinds, I've managed a few times to come back and build a big stack, and even a few times to come back and win the whole thing. Once you know that it's not the end of the world when you lose a big pot and you're down to seven big blinds, anything can happen.

The Poker Player on His Success and His Future

RL: What do you value more, the long-term success you have achieved at a relatively young age, with almost $6 million in career tournament winnings, or any one major title that you have taken down?

NL: The biggest event for me has to be the WPT. From day one when I started playing, that was my ultimate goal, to win a major, especially a WPT event. I had a good start early on; my first two tournaments, I didn't win, but I chopped a good amount of money. But you're always worried about whether you will be able to win a major title, and are good enough. I wouldn't want to be one of those players who plays 10 to 15 years and has a lot of cashes but not a major title. I got that out of the way kind of early, and that has to be one of my happiest events. It gets the monkey off your back and it solidifies you. And not just you, but your family, too, because this is your first time on TV, and once your family sees you on TV winning a major title like that, you've got their support. It lets you know you're not chasing fool's gold.

RL: The one piece of hardware missing from your resume is a World Series of Poker gold bracelet. Are you the best no-limit hold'em player in the world who has not won a gold bracelet?

NL: No, I wouldn't say I'm the best. You could probably put me in a group, like the top five, but in this game, who is to say who is the best and who is not? There is so much variance and so many variables in this game that there is no one player you can say is the best. You can say someone is playing really well or the best right now, but it's very hard to maintain consistency in this game. Even if there are enough people who say I'm the best, it doesn't mean that it's true two months from now. It's something that's hard to answer.

RL: You're still under 30 and already have almost $6 million in career tournament winnings. You said that you know you're going to be playing this game your whole life. Do you think it is possible that you could end up being the all-time leading money winner in tournament poker by the end of your career?

NL: That is a lot of money, $6 million. Of course it is something I want to do; I'd love to break that $12 million record. I think with all the major events these days, it's not out of reach, so I think that J.C. [Tran] and I will break it eventually if we continue to play at this pace. We have talked before about slowing down, but we always say that, and we always end up back at the tournaments. What we did this year is cut out all the prelims, basically. We have tried to focus on the bigger events - the ones that are televised, and the $10,000 events. Right now, I think we're really shooting for the stars, and we're going to save our time and energy for the bigger events.

RL: You are a part of one of the most successful traveling groups of poker players in the world, with J.C. Tran, Steve Sung, Danny Wong, Quinn Do, and others. How much help is it to have these guys on the road with you, constantly discussing poker strategy?

NL: I think it's a big part of our success. Let's say you're a talented player, but you're on a bad run and don't know what's going on. If one of your friends does well, at least you know you're doing the right things, because you talk poker all of the time and you share the same strategies. If I haven't done anything in a while but J.C. has, I know I'm doing the right things because we talk poker all of the time. I know that if I just stick to what I'm doing, eventually I'll break through, and in a lot of cases, that's just what happens. Just having all of those good players around you, you know that you eventually will break through again.

RL: Almost every other tournament, someone from your group is either making a deep run into the money or making it to the final table. If it is not you but someone else from the group who does this, do you feel like you're still mentally engaged in playing the tournament with them as you watch them and give advice?

NL: In tournaments, it's all about being positive. When good things happen and you're around positive people who do good things, it's contagious. It keeps your spirits up and your confidence high. Whenever somebody does well, it keeps the group's spirits up and everyone motivated to keep playing. This game is so grueling and we spend so much time on the road that it helps a lot whenever somebody does well; it picks us up.

Nam Le Finds Sponsorship Deal in Asia and Wins Big

Nam Le recently found a sponsorship opportunity with the brand-new Asian Poker Tour. Le, J.C. Tran, and Quinn Do all signed deals to represent the APT on the world poker circuit after the conclusion of APT Macau on Aug. 31, and two of them had major cashes soon thereafter. Le won the Asia Pacific Poker Tour $19,200 high-rollers event on Sept. 9, and took home $474,359 in prize money. Do also made an appearance at the final table, cashing in third place. "It's actually perfect timing. With the APT having faith and confidence in us, it's great that in return we can show them they did the right thing," said Le.

Le also related that he is happy to sign with a tour that is growing poker on the ground level in what will be the most explosive market for poker in the future. "The Asian market is huge. I mean, it's only growing; there's so much money out there, and with the Asian culture, gambling is not really taboo. It's a part of the culture, so potentially it could grow really big, and what the APT is trying to do is help that growth. I'm happy to be a part of it, to help grow poker in Asia," said Le.