Popular with a number of names given by his fans and admirers, Scotty Nguyen has been in the professional poker business since the ’80s. The present generation of online poker players may not know who Scotty Nguyen is but if you know the history of poker in the past then you would know the man better.
In the ’80s, Scotty was a college drop-out with a knack for elevated math. He did some research and discovered that the best way to make money was in poker. After some time, he came into the imagination of the Las Vegasaires who were busy planning the recreations of the old casinolivets, as they were going to be the templates for the future Eiffel Tower in Las-Vegas.
Named after the city in France, where he was born, Nguyen had a difficult start in his career in poker. In less than a decade, the tables were his, even though he was just a college drop-out with a weak mechanical engineering background. He had to make certain changes in his style of playing in order to excel in the new emperor’s game of poker.
“My father was really against the Vietnam War,” Scotty Nguyen told All In Poker. “And my mother was against it too. My father was very anti war, you know, with all due respects. And my mother was strong on anti-war, you know, with passion. She really thought that the United States was kind of a mess that we got ourselves into.”
NPC Pokerlegenda has given us a profile of this extraordinary man. Read along to see how his life was affected by poker and what he has been, in his own words.
Self-made Poker King Scotty Nguyen Q&A’s
How did you become a poker player?
Q: Actually, my father was a gambler and a arms dealer. When I was very young, he was addicted to gambling. If you know your father, though, he was a nice guy. I remember him opening the shades and typing “First you steal the money, then you get in the fighting ring.”
Q: Did you ever try to combat his addiction?
SC: No, and I wasn’t either. I was born in Vietnam. My father was an Hoang Van Nguyen. Hoang Van Nguyen is the name of the greatest gambler of all times.
Q: Which type of Nguyen?
SC: That’s the complicated part. My father was very intelligent. He had to work really hard to attain the education that he did have. weighed 102 pounds when he was 20, and had to work outside the home to support his family. He nearly led a revolution in the gambling world. Before the American government became involved in the Vietnam War, he was on the forefront of the industry.
Q: What did you think when you found out your father was playing blackjack for a living?
SC: That was the best news that I ever heard. I couldn’t have done it without my father.
Q: But it must have been very difficult being the kid. You were raised in that household, and everyone was close, and it must have been very confusing.
SC: No, it wasn’t complicated, but it was a struggle. Every family has a king or a queen, you know. And my father was no different. He was really out to make a lot of money and really not interested in money as much as he was in sports and football. And he was very good at the handicapping, so he had a lot of knowledge out there.
Q: Did you tell your father that you were going to follow in your father’s career?
SC: When I told him, he was very proud of me. Especially since football was his main source of income. When I told him that I was going to be a professional gambler, he was very excited. Advised me to be careful with my career and to tell no one about my thoughts, he said, ‘Oh, boy, this is going to be tough.’ But man, it’s been tough, that’s never stopped me in the slightest.
Q: Did your father ever beat you when you told him that you were making a living off of sports bets?
SC: Not that I’ve ever heard. No, he’s been very supportive all the way. Probably he’d been beating me a little each day since I started.
Q: Did your father ever come over to your house and tell jokes while you were working?
SC: Not that I’ve ever heard. No, he’d be in the yard, doing the yard work, and I’d be in the basement digging ditches, and he’d be sitting at the kitchen table, drinking beer and smoking cigars.