Interview With Tri 'SlowHabit' Nguyen + Exclusive Excerpt From The Book

Tri 'SlowHabit' Nguyen is a world-class online poker player and one of the foremost poker thinkers and writers today. Learn more about Tri's career both as a player and author, as well as his newest book, "How I Made My First Million From Poker".

Tri 'SlowHabit' Nguyen

Tri "SlowHabit" Nguyen is a legend of online poker for both his abilities on the tables and how well he expresses himself away from them. He's written several popular books including beginner favorite "The Poker Blueprint".

On December 15th, he's releasing his newest book, "How I Made My First Million From Poker", a guide to managing yourself as a professional poker player. PokerStrategists who decide to pick it up can do so at Tri's website, and you'll receive a 10% discount for using the discount code "PokerStrategy" at the check-out.

 Purchase "How I Made My First Million From Poker" (Remember to use the discount code "PokerStrategy"!)

Tri took some time to talk to PokerStrategy.com about his career both as a player and an author, and he provided some details about what to expect from the book.

The Interview

"Rounders" sparked Tri's interest

PokerStrategy.com: First of all, can you tell us a little bit about your background and about how you got started playing poker?

Tri Nguyen: I got started playing poker in 2005 when a bunch of my friends were watching "Rounders" and we decided to play. Soon I went to a casino to play small stakes, and then I turned to online poker at small stakes. I quickly moved up because I thought I could win at higher stakes; I think it's the way it worked for most players back then because very few of us understood bankroll management. I would play at a game with only 2 or 3 buy-ins and drop back down if I lost one. Fortunately I ran good, which I think is often very underrated when people are taking a shot.

PokerStrategy.com: At what point did you begin playing and theorizing about the game seriously?

Tri Nguyen: Right after graduating college in late 2005 I was just playing by feel and trying to exploit my opponents. It would be impossible to describe what I was doing without talking about game theory, but at the time I had no idea what game theory was. I thought that the players who would talk about game theory were overcomplicating the game unnecessarily, or even just trying to sound smart to cover up that they weren't winning. Later on when the games got tougher it became necessary to understand poker in that way, and I began to write and think about theory in order to further help my own understanding of not only what worked, but why those things were working.

If You Don't Reveal Your Secrets, Someone Else Will

Let There Be Range!

PokerStrategy.com: When did you decide to make the jump from writing for your own benefit to authoring books?

Tri Nguyen: One day I was thinking about poker and the idea just hit me- "if I were to teach a person to play poker, how would I do it?" I realized I would focus on hand combinations, and that's why so much of the beginning of my first book, "Let There be Range!", focuses on that. Later on I started talking to Cole South, and he's an awesome player so we decided to continue working on it together. The title was the last thing that I wrote after I realized so much of the book was based on thinking about hand ranges.

PokerStrategy.com: A lot of concepts in that book were being printed for the first time - were you ever concerned about revealing the secrets of the best players?

Tri Nguyen: I never really thought that mattered.  Eventually people find out about everything, whether it's you or someone else that reveals it in a book. A lot of players haven't written books or created videos out of fear of others learning their secrets. My response to that is always, "don't worry about it, because in 6 months someone else will anyway." Then the secrets are revealed AND they didn't profit from their own ideas.

Writing With an Amateur

PokerStrategy.com: Your beginner strategy book, "The Poker Blueprint", received excellent reviews, but it was written with Aaron Davis who doesn't appear to have been a poker pro or a professional writer. Can you tell us about him and why you chose to work with him?

Tri Nguyen: Aaron was actually a student of mine rather than a well-known professional. One of the reasons that book is so popular is because it's based on an outline that he created with all of his questions and topics he wanted to know about in poker, and then I sat with him and we answered those questions. A lot of beginning players find it very helpful for that reason, and I probably would have found it less interesting to write about beginning topics without having someone there to tell me if I was doing it in an interesting way or not. It would have been too difficult to write it on my own.

The Importance of the Non-Technical Side of Poker

PokerStrategy.com: Your brand new book, "How I Made My First Million From Poker", appears to be vastly different from your previous work. Can you tell us about it and why you chose to write it?

Tri Nguyen: I wrote "How I Made My First Million From Poker" with a similar theme to Barry Greenstein's "Ace on the River", and when I asked Barry he was nice enough to write the foreword to it. The book is about how to manage yourself as a professional poker player, including how to keep yourself motivated and how to work on your game to stay ahead of the curve. I also give recommendations about bankroll management, tilt control, how to deal with money, and tons of other ideas that I'm sure will improve your bottom line as a poker player.

I've written so many strategy books at this point that I felt like if I wrote another one it wouldn't help the readers as much as if I created this type of book. I think this is similar reasoning for why Barry wrote about the non-technical side of poker in his book back then as well. I sent it out to a couple of pro players who have read it and they love it, which is exciting.

PokerStrategy.com: What type of players do you think would gain the most from "How I Made My First Million From Poker"?

Tri Nguyen: I would say that it's appropriate from beginners all the way to nosebleeds; I even wrote some passages with nosebleeds players specifically in mind. Even though my friends at those stakes are super good technically, there are other leaks that they can have that will prevent them from being successful for a long time. Every so often there's a new generation of players coming in, and often what makes or breaks them has nothing to do with their technical poker ability. For example when Isildur1 came in he took over the nosebleeds briefly, and eventually there will be another player like that with more emotional control.

PokerStrategy.com: Thanks for taking the time to talk to us, we look forward to checking it out!

Exclusive excerpt + 5 free books

Tri provided an exclusive excerpt of his book for members of PokerStrategy.com - read his column "Why is he playing like that against me".

In our forum thread we are also giving away 5 copys of the book for free.

by Matt Kaufman