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There is no such thing as “the complete poker player.” In a game whose information is incomplete, we as players are equally incomplete. Try as we might to play perfect poker, our games can only go as far as we, the flawed pilots, can take them. Our games are composed of parts whose combined mass forms an incomplete whole.
If you watch long enough, you’ll see even the biggest stars show their frailties: Phil Ivey gets bored with smaller stakes and plays like it; Phil Hellmuth’s swagger may have cost him his first heads-up shot at bracelet number ten when he lost to Jeff Cabanillas; Doyle Brunson still gets caught by the lipstick camera playing his vaunted 10-2. There are no flawless players. Perfection is a myth.
Most of us seek to become better by overcoming our weaknesses. Spot your own tell or come to grips with the fact you’re playing small pockets too aggressively… that kind of thing. Through the study of text and theory, we come to understand a good number of truths about the game that others don’t. Knowledge is power, but in the end, we can’t correct all of the flaws because we don’t know that they’re there to be corrected. In a selfish game in which the player faces the world, our flawed self-perspectives can ultimately prove our downfall in the quest for perfection.
JC Tran may have found a way around all of that.
See, Tran knows that he has flaws. To err is human, perfection divine, and none of us play poker with the gods (well, we shouldn’t; bad game selection). What differentiates
Tran from so many, though, is the realization that given his own limits, to make up for his imperfections, he must leave the realm of personal experience. He must become part of a sum that is greater than its parts.
Tran doesn’t play poker alone. “Team” was once a dirty word in this game, but today JC has applied a new meaning to the word in forging a new-style approach to the old-style game. He relies on his friends as much as he does himself: to spot his weaknesses; to debate his decisions; to keep him living the straight and narrow. In a world of temptation, it’s the team concept that keeps him grounded.
The concept is hardly a revelation for a guy who’s always kept his friends and family by his side. JC’s has been a life lived amongst others, a polar opposite to the solitary example provided by so many of his peers. Every step of the way, someone has been by his side; it is testimony to the way he relies on the people he loves and the way they gravitate to him.
Born thirty years ago in Vietnam, Justin Cuong Van Tran doesn’t remember those days. He and his family landed in Sacramento by the time he was two, and the town has served as home base for the vast majority of his life. The youngest of eight children, he was brought up in a loving environment, surrounded by mentors whose mistakes served as warnings for him. This would teach Tran, unlike most poker players, to rely on those around him.
“I grew up in the projects,” he told me by phone between World Poker Tour stops. “We didn’t have much.” JC’s surroundings were diverse, a racial patchwork quilt of assorted immigrant fabrics, where the fight was often for survival. It was an environment that could easily have led him to the wrong side of the tracks, but he found a passion worth staying straight for.
Tran played football competitively for three years in high school. “Sports kept me out of trouble,” he’d remember. They also kept him surrounded by a certain mentality, his teammates accustomed to winning and expecting the same attitude from those around them. When JC remembers, “I was surrounded by a lot of winners,” you can hear the pride in his voice.
The football experience was what instilled the team approach to his poker. “When you’re part of a team, relying on one another to win, its okay to say certain things you can’t say to a stranger.” He said this about his present outlook on poker, but it was obviously a football hand-me-down. “You know the other guy wants to win for you just as bad as you want to win for him, so if there’s a problem or some advice you want to give, you talk about it like men.” We’ll get back to team poker in a few paragraphs.
Football saw him work his way through high school; duty took him to college. A promise of an education would see him to university, though his reasons for being there weren’t the most practical. “I didn’t have a plan in college. I switched majors like five times.” The problem was that he’d found what he wanted to do long before graduation, and there wasn’t much school could teach him about it.
When he turned twenty-one, JC went to a live casino for the first time and the match was made. “I graduated to make my parents happy,” he says of his degree in business administration, “but I wanted to be a poker player.” Apparently, Everest wanted to be a mountain.
Over the last eight years, Tran has been what he wanted to be. He started playing religiously, finding his real education in California’s classic card rooms. There were bumps along the way; the pit always called and he was susceptible to its charms. Still, he overcame that to start cashing in tournaments in 2003. In February of the next year, he finished seventh at the LA Poker Classic. It was his first substantial finish in a $10,000 buy-in event. Later that year, he made his first WPT final table. Since then, it’s all been gravy.
His girlfriend Heather was in the picture throughout. Another teammate. Another winning influence. JC normally talks with a relaxed confidence to his voice. He’s not shy, but doesn’t need to be loud. He carries himself with a calm self-assurance that says everything is always under control. When he speaks of Heather though, he softens a little. You can hear the smile in his voice. For ten years now, they’ve been together, she the school teacher, he the professional poker player. She’s entirely supportive. When he’s on the road, they talk every day. Another soul gravitated towards the man. “She keeps me grounded.”
Heather has been a constant in JC’s life over his poker career, but it’s the close-knit group he travels with who keep him sharp. Nam Le, Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi,
Chris McCormack, Amnon Filippi. He flies with them. He plays with them, and like we saw earlier, he trusts them implicitly with his game. His friendship with Nam has evolved to the brotherly level.
The two met on the tournament circuit, where JC saw the want in his best friend’s play:
“He wanted to win so bad, like me. I saw how it hurt him to lose. At one point, we were cheering for him late in a tournament and he went out. A few minutes later, I got a text from him apologizing for letting me down. Apologizing? I mean, I didn’t have any money in him or anything like that. He was crushed. It really impressed me. Then, when he won
Bay 101 (in 2006), he didn’t forget who his friends were.
After that, we just started talking a lot about the game, you know? When someone you don’t know comes up to you and starts criticizing your game, it’s like ‘Who are you?
Why are you saying this to me?’ With me and Nam, and the other guys too, we know that if we see something, we should say something.”
Nam and JC are seldom found apart, mostly because they live such similar lifestyles, being wholly dedicated to the pursuit of tournament perfection. Filippi and McCormack, while constants on the tournament circuit, will also spend time in cash game play and other avenues. For The Grinder, it’s a case of having other priorities. He’s a family man now.
“Grinder would be right here with us if he didn’t have a baby to take care of. I remember
I was walking with Grinder and Nam in Niagara Falls (during the 2006 North American Poker Championship) and they were like one and two in the Player of the Year race, and I was joking, ‘Man, I feel so honored to be hanging out with numbers one and two in the world.’ Grinder was like ‘What are you talking about? We’re one, two, and three.’ It’s just good to be surrounded by people who know how to win and who are there to support you. Like, sometimes, they’ll advise me on things and I’ll disagree, but we know we can talk about it and not insult one another, you know?”
The group has become remarkably tight. Tournament pro Shane Schleger recently referred to Tran, Le, and Grinder as “the Holy Trinity of tournament poker,” out of respect for their skill and consistency. McCormack and Filippi are right there with the three. The group has reached a level few have, by sharing their games and thoughts with one another. In becoming the sum of their parts, they’ve each become more than they could have on their own. They’ve done so quietly enough that the older guard may not recognize it.
“Respect is really important to me… it’s what keeps me hungry. Guys like Daniel
Negreanu and Eli Elezra, they’ve supported me, told people I’m for real. For some of the other big names, though, some of them didn’t know who I was. That just made me play harder.”
JC finally started getting that respect when he managed a half-million dollar win in the
World Championship of Online Poker, despite rarely playing in cyberspace. He started getting magazine covers and the recognition that comes with that. The online championship was just the beginning of a magnificent streak.
In November, he won a $2,800 buy-in event for $300,000. Then, a month later, he took another first place, this time in a $2,000 buy-in event for a cool quarter-million. Still searching for his first big televised win, he made his third WPT final table in Tunica, finishing sixth. That only made him hungrier, and he was a force at this year’s LA Poker
Classic until coming up one hand short against Eric Hershler.
“I’m seeing everything now,” he admitted. “My reads are really strong. I’m running good.” When I asked if he was like the hothitting baseball player for whom the ball looked bigger than usual, he liked the comparison. “I found the groove and I’ll keep riding it until I hit a brick wall.”
Such proclamations wouldn’t be so easy to make for a man traveling the world alone, but JC is not that man. Surrounded by winners and friendship and love, he knows that when he hits that wall, the people who love him will pick him back up. It’s a special kind of strength that the toughest characters in the world can’t understand because they choose to go it alone; they choose to have their experiences be the sum of their being.
Tran is the sum of others. There are bits of his family and football team, Nam and
Grinder, Amnon and Chris, and, of course, Heather. For all of his frailties, their parts buoy him; they make him more. It’s not perfection because it can’t be, but maybe — just maybe — he’s found a way to be whole.
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