China’s Poker Queen Celina Lin Peifei Makes the Game Fashionable

She calls it ‘the new golf of China’ and Celina Lin Peifei has led the charge from the front as poker has become much more glamorous and acceptable in her native land, even her father changing his opinion of the game and planning to learn to play when he retires.

Born in Shanghai, Lin now lives in the poker Mecca of Macau having spent much of her childhood and formative years in Melbourne, but it took her quite some time to overcome the conservative attitudes of her friends and family before being accepted as a professional poker player.

"Culturally, it is something that is frowned upon, that was one of the hurdles," the 35-year-old told the South China Morning Post recently, explaining that: "My parents did not understand the game and they felt like it was very similar to playing blackjack and baccarat. Because poker tournaments are organised inside a casino, people relate it to all the other games," she reasons, adding: "I had to say to them ‘No, you do realise we play against other players, we are not playing against the house? We make decisions after we’re given information."

Lin came upon the game of poker in Melbourne’s Crown Casino after finishing university and built a “US$10,000 bankroll playing online in just three weeks”, since then winning almost $900,000 in live tournaments including a $110,000 scoop of the Macau Poker Cup Red Dragon in the summer of 2012.

Now an instantly recognisable face in the poker scene, the PokerStars ambassador says her father, who it took “almost three months to turn around” is now proud of her achievements and “displays all my trophies in the living room for everyone to see. It’s been a journey for my family and me.”

Although playing poker for money in her native China is illegal, Lin says that the game has “become the golf of China, it’s become one of those very prestigious games to be seen playing,” explaining:

“It’s not the old school shady underground feel that you get when you think of poker, it’s much more glamorous now. It’s very much in fashion as golf was.”

Speaking of the poker boom in Asia, she states: “Just recently we had a record-breaking 1,350-odd players for that event. It’s massive, in 10 years we have seen amazing growth in players from Asia,” also mentioning that the ratio of female players to men far outnumbers what we see in the West.

“It has changed [the world over] but it has been a lot more obvious in Asia,” she told the SCMP. “I have seen probably 7 per cent of the field are females [in Asia] and I think that number would be much less in North America.”