Poker Profile – Bill Chen
About Bill Chen
| Current Residence | Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania |
| Born | 1970 |
| Birth Place | Williamsburg, Virginia |
| Total Winnings | $1,912,161 |
| PLAYER SCORE | 8/10 |
|---|---|
| Aggressiveness | 7 |
| Looseness | 5 |
| Limit | 9 |
| No-limit | 8 |
| Side Games | 6 |
| Steam Control | 8 |
| Against Strong Players | 8 |
| Against Weak Players | 8 |
| Tournaments | 8 |
| Short-Handed | 9 |
Bill Chen The Math Guy
William Chen was born in 1970 in Williamsburg, Virginia and clearly was a numbers person. After graduating high school, Bill triple-majored in Physics, Math and Computer Science at Washington University in St. Louis. He interned in the university’s Computer Science SURA Program where he contributed to a technical report called Argument Game. Bill went on to the University of California, Berkeley where he completed his PhD in mathematics. However, to help pay his way through school, Bill picked up the game of poker by frequenting the Oaks Card Club. By the time he graduated in 1999, Bill has a PhD, money in his pocket, a job working for SIG (known for having a culture built around poker) and a desire to play.
A PhD in WSOP Bracelets
While Bill worked at SIG, he honed his game playing mainly small stake poker tournaments near him, but Las Vegas came calling and Bill went to Sin City to play in the WSOP. Thankfully working for a company like SIG, they let his take his vacation so that he could pursue glory at the WSOP, and it did not take long to cash in. His first WSOP cash came in 2000 where he finished 11th in the $1570 Limit Ace to Five Draw event. He next cashed in 2005 for a little over $8500 in two events but that set him up for his breakout in 2006. There he would cash 6 times including a career best $343k victory in the $3000 Limit event. Bill went on to win the $2500 Short Handed NLH event for $442k just 11 days later. Despite his background in math and statistics, Bill said that his success was more to do with luck than skill; potentially a reason why he did not turn pro and opted to stay with his current job.
Bill Chen’s AA – Ambassador and Author
While Bill was cleaning up in 2006 at the World Series of Poker, he was busy writing a poker book with Jerrod Ankenman that was published in the fall of 2006, months after his memorable run through the WSOP. The Mathematics of Poker was meant to give readers an introduction in how to apply math to poker through quantitative techniques that start simple but build on them to get to more advanced concepts. While the book had serious potential, many feared that poker players would see it, leaf through it, see a bunch of math equations, and sit the book back down on the shelf, opting for more well-known books like Super System.
Meanwhile, winning 2 poker bracelets in the Moneymaker era caught the eye of one of the biggest online poker rooms out there. PokerStars was quick to sign Chen to a deal to sponsor him in tournaments he played over the next year but was not marketed to the same degree as other team PokerStars players were at the time; probably due to Bill’s sparce schedule outside of the WSOP. As a result, PokerStars and Chen parted ways one year later.
Life After PokerStars
It may not come as a shock but life after PokerStars and the fame that he had after the 2006 WSOP is much the same today as it was back in 2000 when he graduated university. He still works at SIG, and he still plays low stake poker tournaments, although he may still be going to the WSOP every summer (his last recorded cash at the WSOP came in 2016). Life for Bill Chen today may not be all that different from life back in 2000.
