Hung "Phi" Nguyen, was born in Vietnam , but he moved to in Santa Ana, CA, United States 28 years ago. Currently he is at the age of 46 and one of the most successful poker players.
He started his career as a poker host at the Normandie Casino, after that for a short period of 2 years was a top-section poker host at the Hawaiian Gardens. This is where Phi Nguyen had become fond of being a host, and still enjoys doing it so he does not plan on quitting to play poker full time.
World Series of Poker and Phi Nguyen
Phi Nguyen is now a professional poker player, most famous for having multiple wins at the World Series of Poker (WSOP), including two WSOP bracelets, the first of which was in the 2003 $2,500 No-Limit Hold'em event. He cashed in $222,800, and won at the final round against his friends and professional players T.J. Cloutier, David Singer, Steve Zolotow , Tom Jacobs, Kenna James, Mike 'The Mouth' Matusow and Jim Miller. In 2004 he won his second WSOP bracelet, earning $180,000 at the 2004 WSOP $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em Shootout event, also against fellow poker players such as Daniel Negreanu and J. C. Tran. At the 2006 WSOP he managed to finish at 164th place out of 8773 players altogether. Phi Nguyen’s most recent entry was at the 2008 WSOP, where he took 26th place out of 6844 entries. His total WSOP and circuit earning come up to $799,133.
Phi Nguyen has also taken part in many other poker tournaments, one of them being the World Poker Tour (WPT), at which he has managed to cash in six times with a total of $105,000 in earnings. The highlight of those was at the 2003 Legends of Poker in Los Angeles, earning $30,900. Other events include the 2001 Heavenly Hold'em, the 2001 Tom McEvoy Poker Spectacular, the Hawaiian Gardens Casino Weekly Tournaments 2002, the 2003 Bellagio Five-Diamond World Poker Classic, the 2007 Sport of Kings and many more.
Altogether Phi Nguyen has been playing poker for 18 years, in which he has total winnings of $1,550,000 (as of 2008), 6 first place finishes, 318 tournament entries and 104 finishes with money reward.