It is rare that a person can be universally loved, and that type of person is perhaps even rarer in the cutthroat world of poker. Thuy Doan was one of those people. Lovely both inside and out, Thuy succumbed to cancer yesterday. She was just 25-years old.
Born in Vietnam, Thuy moved to Virginia at the age of 7. She took up poker at the University of Virginia after spending time with poker playing friends, including the renowned Hac and Di Dang, known as “trex313” and “urindanger” online. Like many, she started out by grinding bonuses at low stakes tables, eventually improving enough to start multi-tabling at mid-stakes tables online. Unlike many college-aged players who are good enough to play full-time, however, she did not leave school to pursue poker. Instead, Thuy honed her craft and waited to go pro until she earned her degree. After graduation, she packed up, drove out to Las Vegas for the World Series of Poker, and then relocated to Los Angeles.
In her blog at PokerRoad.com, she wrote of her decision, “Through college I had intentions of pursuing a normal career after graduation. As time went by though, it became difficult to brainstorm other jobs that I could be equally passionate about and challenged by. The more I played and became integrated into the poker community the more I realized that my journey wasn’t ready to end. It’s in my blood and I have miles to travel.”
While Thuy had some success on the live tournament circuit, including four World Series of Poker cashes with one final table, her focus was cash games. And there, she was fierce. Thuy was a wolf in sheep’s clothing: always sweet, always friendly, but she was a killer with chips in front of her. Her game of choice was $10/$20 No-Limit Hold’em, though she would take shots at $25/$50 if she thought the table looked particularly juicy. Thuy was the type of player who presented others with a tough decision: you wanted to play with her because she was, well, Thuy, but you knew that if you did, you were putting your chips at serious risk.
In December 2009, four months after the discovery of a tumor in her upper calf, and three months after the frightening diagnosis of soft tissue sarcoma, a group of poker players which included Barry Greenstein, Doyle Brunson, Phil Ivey, Tom “durrrr” Dwan, Eli Elezra, and Bertrand “ElkY” Grospelier, showed their support for Thuy’s battle with cancer by shaving their heads. At that point in her chemotherapy treatment, she had begun to lose her hair, so she had made a preemptive strike and just shaved it off.
The outpouring of emotion and comments in remembrance started immediately in the poker community upon hearing the news. Some of the comments on the Two Plus Two forums:
“She was an absolute sweetheart.”
“Thuy was awesome. Funny, sweet, and a helluva poker player.”
“Thuy was one nicest, most genuine people that I have had the pleasure of knowing — we went to high school together in Virginia, and I can guarantee you there wasn’t a person at our school that had a negative thing to say about her.”
Barry Greenstein was the one from whom many first heard of Thuy’s passing, as he posted on Twitter overnight, “I never found anyone who didn’t like Thuy Doan. She died of cancer today at the age of 25. I wanted her to keep battling even though she told me she only wished for the nightmare to be over.”
In October 2010 Thuy blogged about her fight with cancer and the fact that the outlook was not bright. In expressing how she felt about facing her own mortality, she wrote, “There are so many things I want to do with my life. It’s not death itself that breaks my heart but loss of potential to do great things.”
Maybe there were goals that Father Time did not allow Thuy Doan to reach, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t achieve “great things,” as she so dearly desired. Just by being her fantastic self, by being Thuy, she had nothing but positive effects on others lives. Thuy will be warmly remembered not for what she did, but for who she was.