Nice Hand Baby!
Ah yes... Nothing a poker player likes to hear more than the (above) words made famous by poker sensation Scotty Nguyen. Being a poker enthusiast myself I have wondered about the popularity of poker among Asian Americans and why so many seem to succeed at the hottest card game being played today. Though I have heard numerous theories from fellow Asian American poker players about why our communities love the game so much, the following link is an interesting look into whether we are getting the attention we deserve.Asian Poker Players by Daniel Negreanu
Labels: sports
posted by Mix76 @ 3:12 AM
4 Comments:
hey guys we succeed because we're "inscrutable" asians. people never know what we're thinking! plus i think gambling is cultural. if someone was rubbing two sticks to make fire, my family'd bet on how long it took them.
In an email conversation last night a good point was brought up about gambling in Asian communities. Should we be promoting the success of Asian poker players? In other words, is such fanfare actually detrimental to our communities? At local card rooms and casinos where I live it often seems that many of the patrons are immigrant Asians who probably can't afford the luxury of throwing money around for fun. Yet these gamblers blow hundreds to thousands of dollars at a time probably believing that they can achieve the same success as Scotty Nguyen and Johnny Chan. Perhaps then it is a blessing in disguise that ESPN and other poker television shows do not spotlight the Asian players making waves in the world of poker.
i think it's a tough call (or raise? sorry).
the comparison might be made to young african american men who see success stories like lebron and try to emulate that, investing energy developing a skill that will ultimately be of little use, and at the expense of developing practical skills. i definitely see a potential parallel there with vietnamese americans or immigrants who see scotty nguyen in this light, and who will end up wasting money chasing the empty promise of his example. and like my man said, that's not a luxury they can afford.
but the post and linked article i think show that this is a kind of exposure that benefits the community, in that it puts an asian face out there for the public to see, and for non-asians to respect. how fucking dope was johnny chan's cameo in rounders? yeah, he got beat by matt damon, but you still got the point that he was badass. so in terms of that, i'm all for the exposure.
i guess we could try and say that in the end, just because someone's doing it on tv doesn't mean you should be doing it on your own. people need to be smart enough to make their own choices? or is that too simplistic?
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