The High-Stakes Architects: Richard Yong, James Chen and Paul Phua
Most poker legends came up through the game, grinding small stakes until the big ones came within reach. The three men here came at it sideways. They made their money in business first, in Malaysia and Taiwan and the casinos of Macau, and arrived at the table with fortunes already made and a different set of instincts than the professionals across from them. What they built in poker turned out to be bigger than any bankroll. Two of them built the richest tournament series in the world, and all three helped drag the very top of the game east.
Richard Yong, the Businessman Who Bet on Poker
Richard Yong was born Seng Chen Yong on December 25, 1957, in Malaysia, and made his name a long way from a card table, in the information-technology and data-mining industries. He didn’t drift into poker; he arrived with a bang. In 2012 he sat down in the World Series of Poker $1,000,000 Big One for One Drop, the most expensive tournament the game had ever seen, and finished eighth for $1,237,333. A businessman trying his luck does not last a day in that field. Yong lasted deep into it.
The results kept coming at the highest buy-ins on the calendar. He won the 2016 Triton Super High Roller Series in Manila, took the Short Deck Main Event at the 2019 Triton Series in London, and finished second at the 2012 Aspers 100K in London along the way, part of a career that has passed $16.7 million in live earnings with a best single cash of $2,130,848. His son, Wai Kin Yong, has since carved out a high-stakes reputation of his own.
But Yong’s largest contribution isn’t a result. Alongside Paul Phua, he co-founded the Triton Super High Roller Series, the tour built around buy-ins most tournaments never approach and a field made up of the best high-stakes players alive. He didn’t just compete at the top of the game. He helped build the stage it stands on.
James Chen, the Coder at the Table
James Chen made history in 2019 when he became the first player from Taiwan to win a WSOP bracelet, taking the €250,000 Super High Roller at WSOP Europe for €2,844,215. It came weeks after a runner-up finish in Las Vegas, and it remains his biggest score inside a résumé that now runs past $10 million in live earnings and 45 WSOP cashes.
Born and raised in Taipei, Chen learned the game with friends and rose fast, adding the 2017 Aussie Millions A$25,000 Challenge, the 2018 APPT Macau HK$100,000 High Roller, and a four-event sweep at the 2023 ASPT Taiwan that earned him Player of the Series. Unlike most tournament names, he built a parallel career in the biggest cash games at Wynn Macau. “Cash games are also more consistently profitable,” he once said, “and at sufficiently high stakes, a player can win the equivalent of a final table payout in one session.”
The most telling detail about Chen has nothing to do with a tournament. Dissatisfied with the poker-tracking tools on the market, he taught himself to code from scratch, spent a year at it, and built his own app, RunGood, to track live results. It is the same instinct that runs through his game: when the existing tools aren’t good enough, build better ones.
Paul Phua, the Architect
Paul Phua came to poker later than anyone should be able to and still reach the top of it. Born in 1964 in Miri, Malaysia, he built a career in business first, in the tech industry and then as a VIP junket operator in Macau, a role that runs on relationships, risk, and reading people. Those are poker skills before they are anything else. He even held a diplomatic post for a time, serving as San Marino’s ambassador to Montenegro, which tells you how far his interests ranged.
The late start didn’t hold him back. With more than $30 million in live tournament earnings, Phua became a regular in the biggest games anywhere, holding his own against professionals who had been playing since they were teenagers. He treated poker the way he’d treated business, as something to study rather than gamble at, and the players who last at high stakes are the ones who keep adjusting.
His real mark is the one he built with Richard Yong. The Triton Poker Series gave the very top of the game a permanent home, and what set it apart wasn’t only the size of the buy-ins but its tone: fiercely competitive without the hostility you sometimes find at that level, with a sense of camaraderie Phua wanted built in from the start. He has since put the same energy into passing the game on, breaking down strategy through his Paul Phua Poker platform rather than guarding what he knows. He counts Tom Dwan and Phil Ivey among his friends in the game, the kind of relationships that form when the field at the top is small enough that everyone knows everyone.
What They Built
Yong, Chen, and Phua each proved that a mind trained in business could hold up against players who had done nothing but poker their whole lives. But the more lasting thing is what two of them left behind. Most great players are remembered for the pots they won. Phua and Yong will be remembered for a tournament series that now runs stops around the world, hosting games bigger than the ones they came up in, for players they will never sit across from.
That is a rarer kind of legacy than a bracelet or a title. They came to the game late, from the outside, and instead of just taking a seat at the biggest table in poker, they built a bigger one.
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About the Author: Shawn Altbaum has been writing and editing in the online gaming industry since 2007, reporting live from the WSOP Main Event and conducting interviews with professional players. An active poker player, he combines industry expertise with firsthand knowledge of the games he covers. He currently serves as Global Head of Copywriting at NSUS Group, overseeing brand voice and content strategy across GGPoker.
