Steve Wong, a professional poker player, hails from Hoofddorp, Netherlands and has two children. Though he is from Europe, Steve Wong is of Chinese origin and is fluent in many languages.
Steve Wong started with Chinese Poker and Five Card Stud games initially and later went on to learn Seven Card Stud. He was first taught poker by his cousin, Steven Liu, a professional online poker player playing under the screen name “Luckyliu”. His cousin asked him to start playing hold’em since it was a skill game, where luck does not play a major role. Soon he started playing online poker in 2003, so that he could learn the basic rules of the game.
Steve Wong began taking part in online tournaments in 2004 under the screen name “S18”. He chose this name because, in the Chinese tradition, ‘18’ signifies “one who is going to prosper”. True to his screen name, in 2004, he won the tournament leader board at PokerStars for three consecutive weeks. Steve Wong continued to play numerous online tournaments before moving on to live tournaments in 2005.
On July 8, 2006, Steve Wong made the poker world sit up and take notice when he competed against several top players and reached the final table, finishing fourth in the $1000 No-Limit Hold’em event at the 37th Annual World Series of Poker (WSOP). For this performance he took home $162,252, his first six-digit prize money in a live tournament.
At the Festa al Lago World Poker Tour (WPT) Event, he won the No-Limit Hold’em event on October 6, 2006 and walked away with close to $200,000. This event was held at the Bellagio, where Steve Wong had to compete in a field that consisted of 101 other entrants. Eight days after this impressive victory, he managed a final-table finish in the Super-Satellite – No-Limit Hold’em event at the same tournament. On October 20, 2006, the Bellagio witnessed another good performance from Steve Wong as he went on to become the runner-up in the No-Limit Hold’em Championship event, taking away a whopping $542,700. His next victory came at the Bellagio Five Diamond World Poker Classic WPT Event Season 5, where he competed against 221 poker players to bag the title and $215,255 in prize money from a prize pool of $538,350. This string of success at the Bellagio earned Steve Wong the nickname “King of Bellagio” and close to a million dollars in total.
On May 2, 2007 Steve Wong became richer by $65,184 when he finished seventh at the final table of Event #9 - WSOP Circuit No-Limit Hold'em Championship at the Caesars Las Vegas Poker Tournament - WSOP Circuit Event. Steve Wong followed it up with another seventh-place finish at the final table in the $2,500 No-Limit Hold'em Short Handed event, for which he took away $47,339 in prize money. This 38th Annual World Series of Poker event was held at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino where a total of 847 players took part contributing $2,117,500 to the prize pool.
As of 2008, Steve Wong has made close to one and a half million dollars from tournaments, including twenty two cashes and two first-place finishes. His favorite poker game is Hold’em, and he has the utmost respect for professional poker players Scotty Nguyen, Allen Cunningham, and Eric Seidel.