Chinese Poker of a different sort

Team Lianzhong makes quiet but meaningful appearance at LAPC.

If you were hanging around the Commerce Casino for the L.A. Poker Classic last month, chances are you will have noticed a group of players sporting patches with Asian-looking hieroglyphics that most of us admittedly aren’t trained to recognize.

No, these players were not from Macau. They were from mainland China, where gaming of the kind we’re used to actually isn’t legal. These players – eight of them from China, plus Sam Razavi – all played the 2013 LAPC Main Event while representing Lianzhong (pronounced ‘lee-an zon,’ meaning ‘connecting all the people’), a popular free-to-play online casual games portal in China that offers many different kinds of card and board games, including Texas Hold’em.

The players were not at Commerce by accident. Lianzhong is the World Poker Tour’s official partner in China. It was Lianzhong, in fact, that reached out to the World Poker Tour last year and asked to work together to organize the first large-scale professional poker tournament in mainland China. The World Poker Tour agreed, and the event turned out to be the landmark WPT National China Tournament, held in the city of Sanya in December of last year.

“We worked very closely with WPT and last year’s WPT China event made poker history in China,” said Anna Sun, Lianzhong’s Global Operations Manager, who accompanied the players on their American excursion this week – for many of them, their first time in the U.S. “We are here to observe the WPT in America and learn more about how poker tournaments are run in the United States.” Sun added that Lianzhong is planning a large “poker festival” in China later this year, which will be significantly larger than last year’s event.

Two of the Lianzhong players we spoke to were Lei Zheng Hua and Yang Xi, aka “Lulu.” This was the first time in the United States for both of them, and certainly the first time they played a poker tournament here. Zheng Hua was actually the winner of the WPT National China Tournament, and you could almost call him the Chinese Chris Moneymaker. He satellited his way into WPT China – a strictly capped event to conform with China’s regulations – by winning a free qualifying tournament online (on Lianzhong), and he ended up taking the whole thing down. Sound familiar?

Like Moneymaker, Zheng was not a pro poker player. He likes to play poker recreationally but, as he puts it, “When I play, I want to win.”

Lulu plays poker more competitively than Zheng, in nearby Macau and other parts of the world where it is allowed. Asked about her experience playing poker in America for the first time, she observed how differently Americans tend to play than Chinese. “There are so many more calling stations in China,” Lulu said, in accented yet clear English. “The game is still new there so people are still learning how to play.”

Zheng agreed the game was still being learned by many, but claimed there are more tough opponents in China than his compatriot would have you believe. “There are a lot of good players in China,” he remarked.

The WPT’s Matt Savage, who was present at the Sanya event, often kept the visitors company during their Commerce sojourn. “As soon as they landed, they didn’t want to go to their rooms and relax. They wanted to go straight downstairs and play poker. We did a lot of events for them, took them all over the city, and for the most part they just wanted to play poker.”

“I think they loved it,” he continued. “They have a real passion for the game.”

China’s rising international prominence is by now an evident fact and common fodder for geopolitical punditry. It should come as little surprise that we are beginning to see the People’s ambition emerge in poker as well, and it’s all the more impressive in view of the country’s heavily restricted gaming climate. As we frequently bicker in the Western poker community about what’s right and wrong for our game, we should be humbled that our friends from the East are looking to us to learn more about a game we all share a common passion for.

Sun said that the Chinese poker community is active in its advocacy for wider legitimization and acceptance of the game, particularly by the government. “We are trying to promote a mindset in China that poker is a competitive sport of the mind.”

Sounds like we may have more in common with the Chinese than we think.