WSOP Main Event Champ Jerry Yang Invests in Sushi Bar

Some of this cash helped to open Jerry Yang’s sushi bar.

When he took down the tournament in 2007, Jerry Yang was the most unlikely WSOP Main Event champion since Robert Varkonyi. A social worker with little poker tournament experience, Yang also entered the final table with one of the shortest chip stack. But he ramped up the aggression and, with some good fortune on his side, managed to win the tournament every poker player dreams of winning.

The champ has continued to play poker in the years since that big win. But unlike some big winners in poker, Yang has found other ways to invest the portion of his $8.3 million winner’s purse that the government didn’t take away in taxes. More than $2 million of that money has gone to social causes – no surprise since he was a social worker before becoming poker’s world champion – and the champ has raised nearly a million more for others by hosting charity tournaments.

Yang’s latest investment, the Pocket 8’s Sushi and Grill in Merced, Calif., is more connected to an earlier time in his life. As a Hmong refugee from the war in Laos during the 1970s, Yang often went hungry and watched several members of his extended family die from malnutrition before he was able to make his way to the United States. Even once he found himself in America, he was often hungry. 

Jerry Yang has dreamed of owning a restaurant since those days, and he finally made the dream a reality in September of last year when he opened his sushi bar on the back of a $540,000 investment. Nearly a year later things are going well despite the poor economy – and now the unlikely WSOP Main Event champ can eat whatever he wants.