Han Feng has been playing poker professionally for a long time, but his dad just found out.
"I never told my dad I played poker until February this year."
Instead, Feng chose to lie to his parents about what he did for a living.
"They have this very negative view of gambling," Feng said in a pre-final table sit-down with Craig Tapscott. "They've probably seen a lot of their friends lose so much money."
If anybody knows Feng, he's "the nittiest guy ever." He doesn't play in the pits, and bankroll management is paramount. Maybe there's nothing to worry about, but the secret is now out of the bag, and just in time for Feng's run to the WSOP Main Event final table.
It turns out that Dad is more accepting than he thought.
"He's just been like watching all of the clips nonstop. They barely speak English. He's watching the free French stream, and not really knowing what's happening, but he's seeing his son on TV, so he's just watching it the whole time."
Han Feng Final Table Tale of the Tape
- Chips: 25,000,000 (8/9)
- Country: USA
- Career earnings: $2,993,830
Textbooks at the table
For what it's worth, Feng held up his end of the bargain before he pursued poker. He went to school and finished a business degree, even as the game started to draw him in.
"When I started playing poker for like real money, I had one more year and a half left in college, and I thought I was pot committed to that degree. If I was going to do poker for real, I was going to finish the degree so my parents don't question anything. They just want me to finish college."
Feng would haul his textbook to the poker room, where he kept up with assigned readings while he played cash games. "You can ask people this. I would literally read my textbook at the table all the time and finish my readings that way."
It started back in 2019, when Feng was 20 years old.
"I remember not being old enough to play at the casino. When COVID hit, and I was finally old enough, I was frustrated about not being able to go to the casino."
Feng grew up from the smallest stakes, like $20-50 tournaments with friends and random garage home games. Eventually, the world opened back up, and it was $1/3 at the casino and then $2/5. "I just scaled up and started playing tournaments."
The brick-by-brick path has led to Las Vegas, where he has a seat at the finale of the WSOP Main Event. It's the endpoint of what had been a rocky summer. Feng had two early cashes at the WSOP, both small. He cashed in a few other tournaments throughout town, but nothing of note until the Main Event.
Meanwhile, the Main Event has been anything but rocky. It has been a smooth, powerful ride to the final table.
"Starting from like Day 5, I think I doubled my stack every day until Day 8. It was a lot of not blowing it up. Everyone kind of loses their mind slowly, and you just have to lose your mind a little slower than everyone else."
Han Feng's day-by-day chip count
- Day 1B - 73,400
- Day 2ABC - 172,000
- Day 3 - 419,000
- Day 4 - 2,550,000
- Day 5 - 6,565,000
- Day 6 - 12,850,000
- Day 7 - 24,000,000
- Day 8 - 25,000,000
'Like a boot camp'
The smooth trip landed him on the shorter end of the leaderboard, so Feng has some work to do when the final table starts on Monday. Unlike some of the other final table qualifiers, who might be enjoying some relaxation, Feng is locked in.
"It's a lot of gym, a lot of study. I don't wanna give too much away, but it's just a lot of locking in, like a boot camp."
Feng is bringing a lot of experience from cash game streams, where he's featured often near his home in Houston.
"I'm able to detach everything very easily. And when I'm playing, it's almost like everything else stops existing. It doesn't get to me as much as it might get to somebody else."
Feng says that it can get under the skin of his opponents.
"It makes them feel a certain type of way. They start to play a little different towards me, which I'm not going to share too much about, but I can feel when someone's never going to fold to me, or I can feel when someone's always going to fold to me. It's a weird energy shift that happens when there are a lot of ways you can get triggered at the table."
"I'm completely cordial. But they'll be like, ‘Man, something about this guy just makes me like mad. He tilts me.’ And I can sense that."
All of that experience could help Feng spin it up, but statistically, this is already a win. He's going to win at least $1,000,000, and he's experienced something that might happen once in a million lifetimes.
"To make the final table of a field with 9-10,000 entries, you're around 1 in 1,000."
"You can only play like sixty times in your lifetime. Even if you're insanely good and beating everybody, it’s an insanely low percent chance to make the final table. And for me to have gotten here on my like fifth or sixth time playing the Main, it's been awesome."
