I hate to say it, but I really didn't take notice to JC Tran until early this year. I kept hearing his name but didn’t know much about him.

I went to the Hendon Mob website and was really impressed with what I saw. Within one month JC won two WPT preliminary events, cashing for over $500,000. He made three final tables the month of October in the smaller events, and by smaller I mean 3k buy-in. He cashed six times at the 2006 WSOP, one of those cashes being a 2nd place finish. This guy was sick!

I went to this year’s LAPC curious about what he might do. Sure enough, after the 2nd day he became one of the chip leaders and stayed that way for the rest of the event. When he made the final table I was really expecting him to take it down. I had to fly to Vegas for the NBC Heads-Up tournament, but I kept an eye on pokerwire to see how he was doing.

Sadly for JC he finished 2nd. Now, don’t get me wrong, 2nd and a million dollars is amazing, but to these pros anything other than 1st is a big loss.

While I was at the Heads-Up match Eric Raskin, the editor of All In Magazine, asked me to do an interview with JC. I was really excited to do this, being that I had been researching JC already on my own.

From being on the poker tour for two years now I know most of the players really well. JC, though, I had never spoken to before. I approached him during Tuan Le’s match with Annie Duke and asked him if I could talk to him sometime for the article. He was super friendly and we made arrangements to talk ASAP.

Both of us have really busy schedules and didn’t get the time to chat until Reno’s World Poker Challenge. We decided to meet up in the lobby of the hotel even though I was a little hesitant of meeting there because of the likelihood of being interrupted during the interview by fans and friends.

Sure enough, ten minutes into talking my worries became a reality. I won’t go into details, you will have to pick up All In and read my article for that, but I will tell you that JC was a pleasure to chat with and said some really insightful things.

I have posted some Q&A’s that didn’t make it into All In on my articles page. Check it out and be sure to keep an eye on this poker wonder.

And by the way, he went on to win the World Poker Challenge tournament after we talked. Guess I’m good luck!

xx
katie