Anna Wroblewski - A Review

Name : Anna Wroblewski
Country : United States
Nicknames : poker pixie, viethottie21
Earnings : Around $820,000
2008 POY Rank : 534
2007 POY Rank : 2,175
Biography : listed below

Anna Wroblewski may be petite, small and single, but at such an early age, she holds a huge presence at the table. She burst onto the poker scene at the age of 18 and her story is one of “rags to riches.”

Beginning with her personal side, she was an orphan at age four in Vietnam and both her parents and baby sister passed away when she was very young. She has since then lived with different family members and finally when she was six or seven years old was sent to an orphanage. She and her other sister were both adopted by an American lady Marilyn Wroblewski in 1994, when she was about nine years old. Looking back she considers that she is more fortunate to be alive than being a poker player

She began playing poker when she was eighteen. It was her boyfriend in Chicago who taught her the basics of how to play poker. Being a beginner, she started playing with low stakes with a bunch of college students. After three months she got kind of hooked on to the game. Once she started winning big, she started to play in cash games shortly after. The more she played the more she won and she was hooked. Funnily, she did not even consider herself a good player

She shortly moved from Chicago to Las Vegas to play professional poker where she developed a gambling problem. Whenever she had funds in her account, she would move up stakes and would not stop playing until she got busted.

This is a common problem with most card players. They get carried away and lose a large amount. Eventually she busted her entire account and struggled with paying bills. The end result was she was forced to move back home to Chicago for five months.

She decided to travel back to Las Vegas for a second chance during the beginning of February in 2007. This time she felt that a job would help bring her some stability. She accepted a $10-an-hour job but took her first week’s paycheck straight to the casino.




She won a single-table tournament that got her a seat into a $2,000 buy-in preliminary event during the Bellagio Five Star Poker Classic tournament series. She cashed by placing sixteenth for a little more than $7,000. Wroblewski then used that money to buy into a $3,000 buy-in event. She took first place and the more than $337,000 prize that also came with a $25,000 seat in the World Poker Tour championship. Amazingly, she also cashed in that for more than $46,000.

And then there was no turning back

She was broke no more, and used her winnings to play in more tournaments. Noting that most of her accomplishments have come in the year 2007, her poker career seems to have a bright future.

David Pham - A Review

Name : David Pham
Country : United States
Nicknames : The Dragon
Earnings : Around $7,300,000
2008 POY Rank : 9
2007 POY Rank : 2
Biography : listed below


Known in poker circles as “The Dragon,” David Pham has been known to light a fire under his opponents with his dominant play and aggressive style.

David Pham’s story begins with a break at a very early age, when the seventeen year old was one of only 46 out of 145 people, to survive a boat journey fleeing his native Vietnam for the United States. Since then he has been having odds at his side very often.

He joined the cleaning business of his cousin Men 'The Master' Nguyen, who had registered some success at the Las Vegas poker tables. He studied the game under his cousin and has learned well from the master. But like Ann, the poker pixie, he is more fortunate to be alive than having ended up as a poker player

Pham went bust his first time trying to play poker professionally with poker professionals earlier in his career. Since then, he came back in a major way, cashing in 17 major events in 2000. This was good enough to earn him Card Player’s Player of the Year honor. Every year since, he has been a regular fixture in the rankings.

Pham made history when he clinched a second Card Player Player of the Year award in 2007. In 2008, Pham also made the final table of the European Poker Tour Poker Stars Caribbean Adventure. He finished fourth out of a staggering 1,136 players who entered.

This Vietnamese-born player loves to keep things burning at the table and is always quick with a comment about the game.

For a guy who started his career working for a dry cleaning business owned by Men 'The Master' Nguyen, this is fabulous. He has since then won over $7,000,000 in tournaments over the years, and continues to perform well.