Poker Face

After a decade breaking into the world of professional poker, I just won my first $1-million score

- BY XUAN LIU, AS TOLD TO ISABEL B. SLONE

I FELL IN LOVE with games of skill and chance when I was five years old, around the same time I moved to Canada from China with my family.

I started playing Chinese chess with my grandma and eventually moved on to Western chess. I was obsessed with the strategy of the game.

After high school, I studied social development at the University of Waterloo in the early aughts. It was the beginning of a golden age for televised poker because hole cameras that allowed viewers to see players' cards had recently come on the scene. I started watching shows like Poker After Dark and High Stakes Poker. I was completely fascinated. All the players looked like cowboys, and they were playing for millions of dollars. I thought, Sure, these guys are talented, but they're not doing anything I can't do.

I read every book on poker strategy I could find. Initially, I played with friends at home with $100 buy-ins. Being a first-generation immigrant meant I had learned English from scratch, which required paying close attention to body language. Reading my opponents at the table was easy, and before long, I was on a winning streak.

I started running my own games. Every time I did, I would make a few hundred dollars. Eventually I was playing every night, staying up as late as 5 a.m., and I started to skip classes.