Elton Tsang

Elton Tsang Ka-wai (born 1980) is a Chinese Canadian poker player currently residing in Hong Kong.

Considered as one of the five best Asian poker players, Tsang has achieved icon status in the international poker scene with his involvement in several historic achievements including:

Outside of poker, Tsang is an investor and entrepreneur.

Born and raised in Vancouver, and with a bachelor's degree from University of British Columbia, Canada, Tsang first started playing poker online on party-poker in 2001 in $2/$4 Limit Hold'em games.

It was upon returning to Hong Kong after graduating university that he realized poker was still very much non-existent in the neighboring city-state of Macau, where gambling was legal.

With the vision that poker would be instantly popular in Macau, Tsang had the idea of hosting the first ever live poker tournament in Macau.

After some research, he discovered that his relative was the owner of the Grand Waldo Casino in Macau.

Tsang scheduled a meeting, gave a successful pitch, and went on to become the tournament's founding organizer in partnership with famed tournament director Matt Savage and Poker Stars as sponsors.

This is how the APPT Macau (Asia Pacific Poker Tour) was started.

But having signed just a one-year deal with Poker Stars and the casino, Tsang was left out the second year and the tournament continued to become what it is today.

This was Tsang's first entrepreneurial move having invested about a million HKD (US$130K) of his own saving.

Tsang continued to play small stakes online, and had a short but successful run in the live tournament circuit before focusing mainly on cash games and playing full time.

Starting off at the HKD$25/$50 ($3/$6) games in Hong Kong, Tsang begun to build his bankroll and moved up to higher stakes.

Tsang later moved to Macau hoping to capitalise on the growing popularity of live cash games, and the influx of wealthy Asian businessmen whom were new to the game.

His games started at HKD$50/$100, then moved to HKD$100/$200 where he struggled the most to maintain.

At that time his goal was to play in the HK$1000/$2000 private game.

He spent the next a couple years moving up and down the stakes while improving his skill.

One of his defining moments in poker came during this time when he was able to finally out-play his then-nemesis, a US pro called Vietnamese John (John Hoang), in a tournament where Tsang came first after beating Vietnamese John heads-up.

This was an important win and a significant boost to Tsang's confidence having been crushed and sent back down to lower stakes by Vietnamese John many times before.

Between 2010 and 2012, Tsang continued to live in Macau, playing poker constantly, and living the fun and exciting life of a professional poker player.

He made a lot of great poker friends there and he attributes them for helping him improve his game.

Tsang was now playing at HK$300/$600 stakes steadily and some HK$1000/$2000 games.

When Macau introduced Omaha, Tsang was ready having learned it online previously.

He played in the HK$1000/$2000 Omaha games where he grew his bankroll considerably.

Armed with a healthy bankroll, Tsang moved up the stakes onto HKD$10,000/$20,000 (USD$1.2K5/$2.5K) & HKD$20,000/$40,000 (USD$2.5K/$5K) No Limit Hold'em games where all the big pros played". It was a juicy game", as Tsang calls it.

Tsang was now playing in The Big Game alongside the world's biggest names in professional poker which included Gus Hansen, Phil Ivey, Patrik Antonius, John Juanda, Tom Dwan, and Johnny Chan.

Tsang struggled to maintain at this game at first, having to drop down the stakes to play Pot Limit Omaha which he frequently used to build his bankroll back up.

Eventually Tsang was able to overcome his loss, survive, and kept going up steadily after that.

Tsang went on to become a regular in the world of super high-stakes poker cash games, winning and losing pots in excess of ten million Hong Kong dollars (US$1.3M).

Tsang shares the story of his most memorable game: “One of the games where I still remember until now.

It was a game that would have broke me or made me.

I was in Macau playing three-handed with Tom Dwan and the Chairman.

That game, we were playing HKD Ten Million dollar buy-in (USD$1.2m) HK$50,000/HK$100,000 (USD$6/$12k) No- Limit.

After playing 24-hours, I had lost HKD$60 million (USD$7.6m).

That was my stop-limit.

I was ready to quit.

But then I ended up giving it one more bullet.

I bought in for another HKD$20m (USD$2.5m) and had I lost it I would have had to move down in stakes and start all over.

I was fortunate enough to win all my money back, and HKD$60m on top of that.

It was the most important game of my life.