It is midnight in Seoul, the capital of South Korea, a rustic the place poker is sort of totally unlawful for residents. In reality, gaming legal guidelines are so restrictive that residents are technically not even allowed to gamble internationally (although loads of individuals do it and no person makes a secret of committing what is likely to be an unenforceable infraction).
Given that, you’d by no means guess simply how in style the sport has turn out to be. While the tradition nonetheless focuses totally on e-sports, avid gamers can’t get sufficient of Texas maintain’em, Omaha, and even the extra obscure variants like Badugi, which was performed in Korea lengthy earlier than it reached American card tables.
On this explicit night time, underground golf equipment are in full swing (discreetly, in fact), personal video games with native celebrities and rich businessmen run in secret areas, and grinders hearth up VPNs to avoid detection and play on-line. (Their post-play homework is finished by obsessing over solvers as they as soon as did for high-consequence math finals.)
There is one authorized possibility for poker gamers, so long as they don’t care about profitable cash. Plenty of overground poker pubs dot Seoul, however there you primarily pay to play, incomes food and drinks offers, or tickets that may get you into real-money tournaments elsewhere.
Gambling For Thee, But Not For Me
Despite the strict playing laws, Korea continues to be residence to almost 20 brick-and-mortar casinos. These properties, together with the Paradise and Seven Luck manufacturers, are solely open to vacationers. Gaming income jumped nearly 15% in 2025 to ₩70 trillion ($2.52 billion), placing it on par with states like Maryland and Louisiana for market dimension.
The one exception is Kangwon Land Casino, situated 93 miles from Seoul on the base of a ski resort. In 1995, authorities officers opened the positioning to locals to be able to revitalize what was as soon as a mining city. As a end result, the property has grown into the biggest on line casino within the nation, with gamblers filling the 675-room resort nightly regardless of the distant location.
Kangwon operates with the motto “paving the way for healthy gaming culture,” nevertheless it is likely to be somewhat too wholesome. The place appears to draw few severe poker gamers from the town.
“It’s too far away and too loud,” one participant in Seoul tells me. “I’d rather take my chances playing illegally here.”
The sentiment matches that of poker gamers in New York City, circa 1990, when there was a surfeit of unlawful golf equipment. Future Hall of Famers akin to Erik Seidel, Dan Harrington, and Howard Lederer minimize their tooth at spots like The Mayfair or The Diamond Club, relatively than make the 125-mile trek to Atlantic City.
It’s twice that distance from Seoul to Jeju, which is taken into account the Hawaii of Korea. The island is a part of a self-governing province that has eight casinos, and has turn out to be a hub for large buy-in poker tournaments. The Asian Poker Tour, World Poker Tour, and Triton Poker Series have added stops to their excursions. Players journey from all around the globe to compete, besides Koreans, who’re pressured to look at from the sidelines.
But canny high-stakes professionals have some alternate options. Seoul is residence to some actually huge, actually personal video games. A supply, who requested to not be named, tells me I might by no means get to see these video games on my fast journey to Seoul. In quick, they’re the closest factor to a Molly’s Game set-up that one will encounter.
“They’re not open to the public. You get introduced by someone, walk in, and will probably see some familiar faces there, like celebrities,” says the supply. “The buy-in can be up to $100,000. It’s a very big game. Probably the biggest game you’ll ever find in Korea. And the host gets to decide everything. Like whether you’re in, or whether you’re out.”
Living The High-Stakes High Life
Steve Yea has no shot at enjoying in these juicy nosebleed video games. As one in all South Korea’s prime professionals, the buy-in isn’t the issue. He’s simply too good.
“If you’re too good, they don’t want you,” stated the supply. “Why would they? These are people who don’t care about the money, amateurs. It’s not like you are a pro in a casino who can walk in and play whatever pleases you.”
“I wish I could play in the private games,” Yea confirms with a good smile.
Yea has combined it up at each stage. He even performs within the pub video games, both as a social pursuit with mates or in change for look charges. (He’ll generally receives a commission as a lot as $2,000 for displaying up and taking part.)
He is aware of the scene effectively, and poker has paid off handsomely. Taking pictures on the tables for 20 years, Yea lives in a classy a part of city, instruments round in a pristine white Mercedes, and reveals off his vogue bonafides with a hat bearing a giant C brand.
I ask him if it stands for Chanel. He explains that it’s Celine, a premier French luxurious model that doesn’t have a presence in my closet.
I bemoaned my luck that I used to be unable to snag reservations for my spouse and I at both Born and Bred or Mingles, two of Seoul’s prime eating places. Yea, an avowed foodie, casually talks about having eaten at each quite a few occasions.
He’s simply ordered steak for 2, together with a pair of pasta facet dishes at Osteria Eden, a done-up Italian restaurant in a ritzy stretch of Seoul. We’re there for a chat and a chunk, washing all of it down with glasses of soda.
The Making Of A Korean Poker Pro
While ready for dinner, the very first thing I’m wondering is how a participant will get sharp in a metropolis the place poker is verboten. For Yea, it began with the pc recreation StarCraft.
“I was a good amateur gamer and knew many players who turned to poker,” he tells Card Player, rattling off examples like ‘ElkY’ (Bertrand Grospellier), ‘Rekrul’ (Dan Schreiber), and a man he calls ‘Spunky’ (Kyu-Hoon Hwang). There was additionally Jin-ho ‘YellOw’ Hong, a prime StarCraft professional and actuality TV star who efficiently made the transition to poker and even gained a World Series of Poker bracelet in 2022.
“I saw the pro gamers starting to play cards and figured it was something I could do,” Yea remembers.
His StarCraft abilities have been surprisingly transferable to poker, which explains why different Korean avid gamers, together with Lim “BoxeR” Yo-hwan and Guillame “Grrrr…” Patry (a Canadian who relocated to South Korea for computer-gaming functions) additionally made the soar.
“When grinding on online poker platforms, the multi-tasking skills I established as a pro-gamer allowed me to manage multiple tables simultaneously,” Hong explains to Card Player. “Additionally, [by recognizing subtleties that are only slightly evident on the computer screen], I can read an opponent’s psychology, infer their thoughts, and calculate optimal moves to insure wins. That aspect felt very familiar to me.”
Yea was on observe to turn out to be a health care provider round 2006. He remembers that because the time when the Moneymaker impact hit Seoul and poker started to blossom, federal legal guidelines be damned.
Criminals leveraged alternatives. Underground poker dens with names like Bugsy, Rounders, and Chips Enjoy have been launched. Neophyte gamers flocked. Yea began slacking off on his med-school courses, received poker recommendation from Schreiber and Spunky (he says ElkY by no means had time) and purchased in. He attributes a propensity to not tilt and pure math abilities for giving him an on the spot leg up towards the not-very-good arrivistes.
“I started winning right away,” he says. “I never went broke from poker, but I was up millions and down millions at crypto. [Comparatively] speaking, poker is actually a safe job.”
Risking A Ride On The Seoul Underground
Relatively secure. There was that one night time when 20 gangsters started combating one another within the membership earlier than the melee spilled out onto the road.
Poker is just not considered positively in South Korea, much like how the sport was seen in America many years in the past. But the unhealthy rap creates an upside for sharp professionals.
“Many people in Korea think of poker as [pure] gambling,” explains Yea. That mindset retains underground competitors comfortable and permits proficient gamers to beat the egregiously excessive rakes. “They know they should study, but instead they just play. It’s a big problem for them.”
Despite excessive rakes and a few operator funds going lacking, the police raids, and spontaneous brawls that sound worthy of a Tarantino chop-socky tribute, Yea overcame all of it to earn a dwelling within the recreation’s illicit quarters.
“I quit medical school to play poker full time,” he admitted. “I loved poker so much that there was one time where I played for five days straight, barely slept, and won $20,000, which was a lot of money for me back then.”
Yea has since performed in big-time tournaments all over the world, racking up almost $3.4 million in prize cash, however he primarily focuses on money video games. His travels have taken him to Macau, Manila, Las Vegas, Southern California, and the European circuit in pursuit of motion.
“You have to travel,” he says, explaining the fact that one can solely go thus far in Seoul. He’s outgrown the underground golf equipment, stakes-wise, gained’t get invited to the juicy personal video games, and restricts his on-line play to CoinPoker the place he has a sponsorship deal.
“Grinding online is first, then you study and play the undergrounds,” he says when requested to disclose the trail to the highest. “After that, you go overseas. For me, Macau has the best games and Southern California” – with proximity to Vegas and the Commerce Casino – “is the best lifestyle.”
Why not transfer to a kind of extra poker-centric locales?
“Korea is my home,” Yea affirms. (He already commented to me that US {dollars} go farther in Korea.) “I also have friends here who are not involved in poker. But I do end up spending more time overseas than in Seoul.”
Such is the lifetime of a Korean grinder who wants to search out locations to ply his commerce.
Korea’s Main Event Finalist
More publicly, final yr Daehyung Lee turned the breakout participant from South Korea, last tabling the WSOP fundamental occasion.
“This is my first final table of my poker career,” he stated on the time. “Usually, Korean people cannot distinguish cash games and tournaments. So, the image of poker is not good in Korea. If I make a good result, I want to help improve the poker environment and image in Korea.”
Without that means to, Lee made an announcement that runs parallel to Yea’s remark about Korea’s rec gamers equating poker with customary on line casino playing.
Days after Lee revealed excessive hopes, nonetheless, issues ran counter to plan. Lee was not solely first to bust out, however he lasted only one hand. He raised under-the-gun with A-Q offsuit and was referred to as by John Wasnock with pocket fives. The flop got here queen excessive, but additionally with a 5, and that was all she wrote.
In the wake of his elimination, wanting somewhat whiplashed and hopefully salved by the million-dollar take-home, Lee instructed the WSOP, “It would be a lie if I said I wasn’t disappointed.” Then, in basic Korean vogue, he added, “I am very honored” and vowed to get together with a posse of mates who had flown in to look at him play his single hand.
Yea acknowledges that he was rooting for Lee. He provides a bit cryptically, “If he won, it would have been good for me.”
More Than One Way To Be A Pro In Seoul
Not all of Korea’s profitable gamers are within the highlight. Some carve out under-the-radar specializations which might be as Korean as kimchi. The native insider who speaks with me on the sly, recounts the story of a former enterprise govt who misplaced his job over his poker obsession.
“I told him he would have to grind in the clubs,” my supply remembers. “I knew he was good enough to do it, but not to go far beyond that. So, he had to play as many clubs as he could, put in as many hours as he could.”
Now the man is making a dwelling as a poker professional, working as much as 10 hours a day – which makes the sport as life-consuming as a fulltime job. But he loves dwell poker and doesn’t care.
“He rents a nice apartment but can’t buy one, because he can’t explain where the money comes from,” continues the supply. “In fact, he doesn’t want anyone to know [what he does for a living]. So, he does not spend a lot of money on his car or his clothes.”
In a metropolis the place poker is considered as something however glamorous, the grinder appears the half.
“He’s very quiet, never gets under people’s skin and is always the guy they call when a fifth player is required,” says the supply, explaining that staying in line is a part of his job. “He’s a natural: very likable and low-key.”
Dogs, Coffee, And Poker
On one in all my nights in Seoul, I get a name from Lad Park. He’s a participant and a widely known poker commentator in Korea. He does all the things on the up and up, is educated in regards to the recreation (regionally and globally), and maintains severe discretion. I may see him at some point turning into the Korean equal of Mike Sexton.
Park asks me if I’m comfy round canine. Not positive what’s coming subsequent, I inform him that I’m.
We find yourself sipping espresso in an offbeat café that encourages individuals to deliver their pets. Considering the distinction towards America – the place you may play poker anyplace however canine aren’t welcome – I can’t assist however ask him what he makes of Koreans who wish to be the following Steve Yea.
“Someone local who aspires to be a poker player? I tell them don’t,” Lad explains to me. “You probably won’t make it. It’s one in 10,000 people who succeed, going beyond earning just enough to pay the rent here.”
Then he stated six phrases that just about salute individuals like Yea, Hong, and Lee. At the identical time, these phrases would make an up-and-coming gambler – who has ego, a perception in his personal future, and the conclusion that you’re going to get higher – resolute to do the very factor he cautions towards.
“It requires a very rare talent.”
Michael Kaplan is a journalist primarily based in New York City. He is the writer of six books together with Advantage Players. Kaplan has written for Wired, GQ, and the New York Post, the place he’s at present a senior options author. He has targeted extensively on know-how, playing, and enterprise — with a selected curiosity in spots the place all three intersect. His article on Kelly “Baccarat Machine” Sun and Phil Ivey is at present in improvement as a characteristic movie.
- Photos by PokerGO (Antonio Abrego, Miguel Cortes) — Shutterstock (Sayan Uranan, f11photo) — Card Player (Erik Fast)
