Book Review - From Vietnam to Vegas!: How I Won the World Series of Poker Main Event by Qui Nguyen

The title of Qui Nguyen’s book is a little misleading. If you are expecting a poker biography cum travelogue you will be sorely disappointed. Where the classic move after a big win like that might have been a cash-grab celebrity autobiography, this book on the other hand is something else entirely. More 2+2 than Hello Magazine. 

Instead From Vietnam to Vegas! is an in depth – sometimes gruellingly so – analysis of the 2016 WSOP Main Event final table that Nguyen won. One-hundred and seventy-six of the final table’s tree-fiddy odd hands are here, with Nguyen’s analysis on each one and additional analysis and a foreword from co-author Steve Blay. So it takes its subtitle pretty literally and gets very blow by blow.

The casual reader is warned.

How I Read: How I Won The World Series of Poker Main Event

Warning issued, I can wind that back in a bit. The analysis is not going to blow out any fuses on the moderately engaged poker player, and at the very end there is a pretty brisk run down of Qui’s life.

The main point is that Vietnam to Vegas! is very much for the players. Though clearly borrowing from Gus Hansen’s Every Hand Revealed, V2V is beefed up considerably by the nerdy additions of Blay.

How nerdy does it get? Well Steve Blay’s involvement in the book resulted from his agreeing to produce a computer simulation of the final table. 

When computer-Nguyen kept winning in cyberspace, the IRL Nguyen heard about it and gave Blay a call to come down and coach him. Blay saves most of the maths mostly for the appendices and intro but there are some in decisions trees and pokerstove print-outs in places.

Speaking of which, the hardback is very cleanly designed. Table diagrams abound and could easily have been either brutally minimalistic, nor overly baroque in the way of a lot of poker books. These are very much momma bear’s kind of infographic.

Blay does provide most of the stumbling blocks too. There is an irritating self-serving tone to Steve Blay’s involvement. For example, his coaching business comes up a lot in his intro and on occasion in his hand analysis. However, I am more than happy to admit my reaction to that probably owes more to the cultural morays of the United Kingdom; an American reader will probably skim right over those moments with nary an eyelash batted.

On The Whole Though…

The book makes for a fascinating read for the enthusiastic amateur. It may feel a little superficial for someone used to the level of discussion that happens on a FlopRurnRiver thread, but the the presence of a second voice, in the form of Blay, adds to Qui’s. It’s an innovation that pays off.

I would recommend.