Photo of Jerry Yang

Jerry Yang beat the odds to become the 2007 World Series of Poker champion and poker’s next big name. He is a part-time amateur player who only had a couple of small cashes in local tournaments in California before becoming the world champ. Yang was born in Laos in 1968 and fled the newly-communist country with his family for Thailand refugee camps, where he lived for four years. In 1979 he moved to the U.S. and later earned a Masters degree in health psychology from Loma Linda University. He has been working as a social worker and is married with six children.

Yang came out firing when the final table started and didn’t stop until it was over. Once he knocked out the first two players he had a massive chip lead of 55 million. He played aggressive big-stack poker for the rest of the event, raising large amounts pre-flop to win the huge blinds, and then made one gut-wrenching call after another when an opponent decided it was time to stand up to him.

Yang is the latest big name in poker who came out of nowhere to become a champion. As much as we all enjoy the top professionals playing for big money, the beauty of this game is that anyone can win if they play for awhile. Greg Raymer, Joe Hachem, Chris Moneymaker, Jamie Gold, and now Jerry Yang all had moderate poker experience up to the year in which they won the main event. A few of them got into the main event via a cheapo satellite tourney, too, because they didn’t have the ten grand to enter.

They are just like most of us, playing online and in local tournaments, working on our game plugging leaks, and going broke again and again - until that special day arrives and all that hard work, those struggles against better opponents, those bad runs, and those emotional relapses comes to an end and you win that big event. Jerry Yang once again showed everyone that poker is for anyone who takes the time to learn the game, and has the guts to put their cash up and compete.