All In (16 page)

The two men cursed at my father, but he was correct. They had no choice but to do things his way.

Still, they did a cruel thing. One of the men went to Laos and bought a bag of grilled chicken and sticky rice and brought it back to the island. Then he and the other man sat and ate every bite in front of all of us without offering even one of the smallest children a grain of rice.

My empty stomach ached; my mouth watered. I would've given anything for just one bite.

The sun had barely set when one of the two boat owners yelled at my father. “It's time. Get in the boat. Let's go.”

“No, it isn't dark enough.” My father refused to yield to their anger.

Finally, night came and with it the cries from the river. We climbed back into the boats and took off. At one point, I saw an empty inner tube and knew someone hadn't made it.

The moment our boat touched the shore, the drivers cursed at my family. “Get
out
.” Throwing our few possessions onto the ground and pushing the women and children out like baggage, they said, “Give us our money.”

My father handed them every valuable we had. Other family members were supposed to help pay for our passage, but when the time came, they claimed they didn't have the money.

The two boat owners snatched up the treasures, jumped in their boats, and off they went toward Laos.

About the time the boats took off, we heard someone running through the brush toward us. Lots of someones.

A squad of soldiers burst out, guns drawn.

I thought for sure we'd been caught by the Pathet Lao and NVA. As the children in our group burst into tears, I looked for a place to hide.

The soldiers shouted something I didn't understand.

My father answered in a language other than Hmong or Lao. Then he turned to my family. “It's okay. They're Thai soldiers.”

At long last, we were safe.

“It looks like I may be here a while, little brother,” I said to Kham Dy from my hotel room in downtown Las Vegas during one of our daily calls during the World Series of Poker. While I would have loved to chat with him in person, at this point in the tournament, being by myself was probably best.

“How long is a while?” Kham asked.

“I don't play again for a couple of days. There are still too many players to get everyone into the Amazon Room all at once, so I'm guaranteed at least one more day. I believe I can do better than that. My chip count is in the top 20 percent of the field.”

“Are you kidding me? Brother, that is very impressive.”

“Thank you. Not to sound overly confident, but I honestly think I can finish in the money.”

“What's the least you will take home if you cash out?”

“Over $20,000.”

“Wow. And how much did it cost you to play in the tournament where you won your seat?”

“Two twenty-five.”

My brother laughed. “So when do you plan on telling Father?”

“I wish I could call him and tell him right now.”

“You aren't going to, are you?”

“No. But if I make it into the 621 who cash out, I'll try to get him to Vegas to watch. I could use his support.”

My brother laughed again. “Good luck with that, big brother. I think you have a better chance of winning the whole thing than of getting Father to come to Las Vegas to watch one of his sons in the world's largest poker tournament. You know how he feels about cards and gambling.”

“Why do you think I never told him I took up poker?”

Kham Dy and I had talked about this before. Even though he is a pastor, Kham Dy never questioned my decision to take up poker. He didn't like gambling any more than my father or wife did, but he also understood I never spent more of our family's money on poker than many of the men in his church spent on golf every weekend.

“So what can I do to help you, Brother?” Kham Dy asked.

“Just pray. Pray I'll have the patience, discipline, and wisdom I need to play my best. I want to represent Jesus the best I can while I'm here. Pray I will.”

“Of course.”

We spent some time praying before hanging up.

After all that the two of us had been through together, I
couldn't imagine facing this challenge without him on my side.

Some people think poker and God are contradictory. I get this from both sides of the question. During my run at the 2007 World Series of Poker, several people criticized me for praying at the table. To them, God didn't have a place in poker. Some church people have criticized me because like my father, they believe cards and poker have no place in the life of a Christian.

I had to wrestle with this myself before I took up the game. Could a religious person play poker without losing all credibility? To me, the answer was easy. I found myself attracted to poker for the mental challenge it presents. Luck plays a part, but the real game comes down to who can best apply and withstand the pressure each hand potentially brings. When I started playing, I didn't take food out of my children's mouths or use the mortgage money to try to strike it rich. While I played to win, I never risked money I couldn't afford to lose. I never expected to recoup the $50 per week I'd set aside when I first started playing the game. Essentially, it was money I spent on a hobby, which happened to be poker. I see this as no more of an ethical dilemma than a tennis player faces when deciding whether to join the local tennis club.

Other players as well as some commentators criticized me for bringing God so openly to the poker table. Some saw my praying as an attempt to get God to change my luck or make the cards fall my way. I can see why some players didn't welcome this. Going up against another player and the luck of the draw is difficult enough without having to take on the
Almighty as well.

To me, though, praying at the poker table is not a good luck ritual. I pray because prayer and God are a large part of who I am.

As I've mentioned, I grew up in a Christian family, although that was not always the case for the Yangs. My grandfather grew up worshipping the traditional Hmong gods and spirits. When he was a boy, he had a dream about a man in a black robe pointing at him and saying, “I have great things I want you to do for me.”

When my grandfather awoke, he went to his father and told him about his dream. “What does this mean, Father?”

His father was excited. “This is a sign. A sign that has stood for many, many generations. You have been chosen to become a shaman. The spirits have vested you with a special power, and now you must use it.”

In the traditional animist Hmong religious culture, the shaman is the highest, most respected member of the community. He communes with the spirits for the people of the village as a healer, spiritual guide, and community leader. To have a son become a shaman is one of the highest honors any family could have.

The presence of a shaman in the family also meant they would never go hungry. Whenever someone gives an offering to one of the gods, a portion of their sacrifice goes to the shaman himself. If you're told to sacrifice your prize bull, you do it. The shaman eats the meat not burned up on the altar. In a country where hunger abounds, becoming a shaman was like
winning the lottery.

My grandfather went away and trained with an elder shaman. There he learned all of the traditional rituals and ceremonies as well as how to discern the signs of nature. One of his most important roles was that of healer. When a person became ill, my people believed the person's spirit moved away from the body. If it moved far enough away, the person would die. The shaman could bring the spirit back only if he determined that the family and friends had presented the right offerings and sacrifices. Even though most Hmong in Laos were very poor, they did whatever the shaman commanded and paid any price. If they had only one cow and the shaman told them to sacrifice it and give the meat to him, that's exactly what they did. He always had the ultimate word.

For twenty or thirty years, my grandfather led his village as the chief spiritual leader. No one commanded more respect.

Then one day my grandfather became extremely ill himself. While fighting a high fever through the night, he had another dream. This time, a man in a glorious white robe told him, “You must leave everything behind and come, follow Me. I have a new mission for you.”

My grandfather awoke in a fright. He had no interest in changing anything about his life. He was the single most powerful figure in his village. To turn his back on the role of shaman and the wealth it brought to his family, to say nothing of the beliefs handed down to him from generation to generation, was unthinkable, but he couldn't shake the image of the man.

As time went by, my grandfather's illness grew worse. Finally,
he told my grandmother about his dream. Word spread from her to people from a nearby village who happened to be Christians.

A couple traveled to my grandfather's village and went into his home, where he lay sick. One of the men looked at him, pointed, and said, “The man in white you saw in your dream was Jesus. He wants you to leave the ways of shamanism and follow Him. You will then bring many people into a true knowledge of God.”

The man might as well have told my grandfather to throw all his possessions into a pile and set them on fire. “I can't do that. I'll be driven out of my village. Everyone will mock me, and my family will starve.”

As time passed and he grew weaker, though, he finally decided he couldn't ignore the dream any longer.
I'm going to die anyway
.
I might as well give this so-called Savior, Jesus, a try.

Believe it or not, my grandfather quickly began to get better. Before long, every symptom disappeared, making a true believer out of him. Having always thought of himself as a great and powerful shaman, he now understood Jesus was much greater and more powerful than he.

Just as he had feared, however, my grandfather was driven out of his village. People shunned the entire family, including my father, who was a teenager at the time. Critics said, “You've betrayed your people by going along with this white man's religion.”

Undeterred, my grandfather knew Jesus was real and that neither he nor his entire family would turn back from following Him. Until the day he died, my grandfather firmly believed God had a mission for him, and he did his best to live
it every day.

My grandfather passed this conviction on to my father, who passed it on to me.

Now, in everything I do, I want God to use me in some way. This is what I'd meant back in 2005 when I'd pointed at the ESPN broadcast of the World Series of Poker and declared to my wife that I would use anything I won for good. If God were to bless me with success at the biggest tournament I could ever hope to play, He would surely have something bigger in mind than simply giving Jerry Yang some prize money.

After my first day of play, I felt this conviction more than ever. Sitting alone in the smelly hotel room after hanging up with my brother, I began to seriously ponder the possibility of cashing out. Even if I finished in six hundred twenty-first place, the $20,000 would change my family's life. The thought excited me but also filled me with a great sense of responsibility. I knew I needed to use whatever I won wisely, to seek God's plan for the money and my life.

That's why I prayed so much at the poker table.

Believe me when I say the praying you might have seen me do on the ESPN broadcast of the tournament was minimal compared to the amount I did back at my hotel. You would have prayed, too, walking through this neighborhood.

During my days off, I went back to the Rio, camera in hand, and did all the touristy things, collecting more autographs and taking my picture with the celebrities who were milling around. A lot of famous actors play poker. I even met
Spider-Man, Tobey Maguire, which thrilled me.

Every time I went back to the Rio, I entered the Amazon Room and watched, always leaving feeling more determined to do well, more focused on my game, and ready to get back to the table to see where this ride might take me. I'd come to Vegas to have fun. Now, with almost 100,000 in chips, I had to get much more serious.

Back at my hotel, I pulled out some of the notes I'd made both during the first round and prior to coming to Las Vegas. After I won my seat in the main event, I went back over the televised poker tournaments I'd recorded and made careful notes on how each pro played. I wanted to be prepared if I found myself at the table with one of them. I also reviewed strategy in the poker books I'd read and reread many times. The caliber of play from this point forward would improve dramatically, and I didn't want to get pulled into rookie mistakes.

In poker, as in any sport, if you're more prepared than your opponents, you stand a better chance of winning. If I lost, it would not be for lack of planning.

I survived my second day of play. Actually, I did more than survive. My chip stack put me in the top 25 percent of those still alive.

From this point forward, I would play every day. Now I could settle into a routine. Each evening, I drove up Interstate 15 from the Rio to my hotel. The fifteen minutes in the car gave me a chance to decompress, and the walk from my car to the hotel gave me a chance and a reason to pray. Thank God I was never mugged.

Once I was back in my room, I went through my same preparation. I called my wife, then watched a little television to decompress. Early the next morning I got up, took a cold fifteen-minute shower, prayed, read my Bible, and meditated. I even did some stretching and basic exercises. At 11:30, my brother called and the two of us prayed together. By the time play resumed at noon, I was focused and ready to go.

About this time, I had an epiphany. As I went through my routine, it slowly dawned on me that this room in this hotel was a huge blessing. With its mildew creeping up the bathroom tiles and its roaches scattering whenever I turned on the light and the crime on the street outside my window, this setting was not so different from the one I'd grown up in.