Scotty Nguyen

Biography

Scotty Nguyen left his home country of Vietnam at a very young age to seek a better life. After spending time in Taiwan working a job as a manual laborer following his departure from Vietnam, Nguyen was able to receive sponsorship from a host family in the United States. After arriving in the United States, Scotty found it hard to adjust to the living conditions. He changed host families and was relocated from Illinois to California. Despite the weather being more acclimating for the young Nguyen, he still found it hard to fully adjust. After some time, Scotty found poker and realized school just wasn’t for him.

After giving up on school, Scotty’s intrigue for the game of poker led him to take on the competition in backrooms and pool halls around California before he made the jump to Las Vegas in his early twenties. His bankroll fluctuated up and down and Scotty soon decided to pick up a job dealing at some of the local casinos. It was the dealer that really helped Nguyen’s game to progress. He was able to watch hand after hand as he dealt and was soon applying his new-found knowledge on the felt. After a few years of dealing and playing, Scotty quit dealing all together in order to focus on playing.

With a few cashes under his belt and one bracelet in 1997, Nguyen’s biggest success to date came in 1998 when he won the WSOP Main Event and a cool $1 million for first place. In the last hand of the tournament, Scotty nonchalantly sipped his beer and said, “You call this one and it’s all over, baby!” Runner-up Kevin McBride made the call and Nguyen showed him the winning hand.

Those two bracelets aren’t all that Scotty holds in his collection. “The Prince of Poker” currently holds five WSOP bracelets and is the only player to have won both the Main Event and the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. Championship at the World Series. As if that’s not enough, Scotty also has a WPT Championship win under his belt and nearly $10 million in lifetime tournament earnings.

It’s not uncommon to see the cool, confident, and charismatic Scotty Nguyen playing in some of the biggest cash games or largest buy-in tournaments throughout the world with a beer in hand, shiny gold chains around his neck, and referring to everyone he sees as “baby!”