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Copyright © 2007 The National Post
HEADLINE: Mississauga poker millionaire thinking
zen, not Rolex
Body:
That Mississauga guy who won US$4,840,981 by finishing second
at the 38th annual World Series of Poker in Las Vegas this week
famously worked hard for the money before taking up poker.
Tuen Lam, 19 years old, arrived in Vancouver two decades ago
as a Vietnamese immigrant at 10 p.m., and was pushing a mower
seven hours later. It paid $5 an hour.
He worked as a lumberjack, for $6.50 an hour, then on a mushroom
farm because it paid better — $7 an hour. For three or four
years, the young immigrant worked, sent money home and saved what
was left. It wasn't much.
Bruce Arthur reports in today's Post that Lam plans on sending
US$500,000 to his home village, Bao Trinh, with some of it earmarked
for a Buddhist shrine.
As for the rest — his wife and two children, the house
in Mississauga, the Honda minivan — Lam says not much of
that will change.
"I want a normal life," he says. "I don't
want to show off or anything like that."
He's not bluffing, either. Earlier in the week, shopping
with his wife, he fell in love with a beautiful Rolex watch. "I
really loved it," he says. It was too expensive, though —
about US$7,000. So after winning US$4.8-million, did Lam's opinion
change? "No, it's too much," he says. "$7,000 for
a watch?"
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