Christian Pham accidentally signed up for the wrong event in the World Series of Poker last week and wasn’t aware of his mistake until after he’d been dealt with his first hand of cards, making it too late to un-register, according to The Huffington Post.
Instead of turning away, Pham decided to fake it ‘till he made it, which he eventually did.
Although he had never played the game before, the 40-year-old poker player won the event, getting paid $81,314 in the process, according to Yahoo News.
“I thought I had registered for the $1,500 limit hold’em,” Pham explained to Poker News.
“I would’ve unregistered if I knew what the event was. They had started dealing already, so I couldn’t do anything. If they had not started dealing, I would have told the floorman and asked to be unregistered.”
Pham had not only never played the game before, but the event that he had won was completely different from anything he had experienced before.
“It’s a totally different game. Different mindset. Different strategies,” stated Shawn Harris, Pham’s dealer at the final table.
Pham used the guidance of other players and some studying on the night in between the games to win his gold bracelet, a prize given for all of the 68 events that took place at the World Series of Poker held in Las Vegas at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino.
“There was a very nice older gentleman sitting next to me, and he told me ‘2-3-4-5-7 is the nuts, and 2-3-4-6-7 is the second nuts,” explained Pham.
“I put that in my phone and tried to figure out what hands I can play. After that I kept learning, but I also got good hands. I folded the first seven hands until I’d learned the game from the guy who was sitting beside me. He was very nice.”
Pham had never thought that he would be making a living off of playing poker.
The professional poker player had reportedly moved from Vietnam to Minnesota 15 years ago, where he began delivering newspapers. He had reportedly played his first cash poker game in 2008 and won second place in a local tournament along with several thousand dollars.
He had decided to pull away from poker for a while in 2012, thinking that it wasn’t a consistent way to make a living, but then he won $214,332 in the World Series of Poker’s circuit main event in 2014, bringing him back to the world of poker in full.
“After that, I thought this game might be very good to me,” stated Pham.
