Johnny Phan - WSOP Event 29 winner Bio

News / nono / 18 June 2008 / Leave a comment

The winner was poker pro John Phan. He is 33-years-old and lives in Stockton, CA. Phan was born in Vietnam. He has been playing poker professionally for about 12 years.

Phan collected $434,789 for first place. He also earned his first WSOP gold bracelet. Prior to this victory, Phan had two runner-up finishes in WSOP events in 2006 and 2007. He also finished fourth in an event in 2005.

Phan's heads-up match against Johnny Neckar clocked in at 6 hours and 13 minutes, which certainly ranks as one of the longer matches in WSOP history. However, this did not come close to threatening the all-time record set in 2006 between Chip Reese and Andy Bloch, which lasted over eight hours. The entire final table took slightly over ten hours to complete.

The Phan-Neckar back and forth heads-up match led to one of the most bizarre occurrences in WSOP history. Just when both players had been playing for six hours and that fact was announced to the crowd, both finalists decided to raise all-in blindly before the flop and let luck takes its course. Phan and Neckar did this for three straight hands. However, some sanity was restored and just as hundreds of screaming fans had ringed around the final table arena hollering out names and cards, both players resumed normal patterns of play - with the duel locked into a dead heat in chips. Half a dozen hands later, Phan finally won the tournament.

Afterward, Phan was almost dismissive of the significance of his victory. Although he had finally won a WSOP gold bracelet after coming close several times, he stated that the one and only goal in poker remains to win the WSOP Main Event. Oddly enough, while Phan was trying to explain himself, he had a bracelet affixed to his wrist from another poker tournament - which was awarded to him for winning a major tournament at the Jack Binion World Poker Open in 2007.

Phan later explained his odd decision to "gamble" for the gold bracelet (moving all-in dark on three hands) by saying, "What can I say? I love to gamble. To me, gambling is what it's all about."

A more serious side of Phan's personality came out later when he revealed that he intends to donate some of his cash prize to charity, and specifically the hometown in Vietnam where he still has relatives.