David Tran was born and raised in Vietnam. He came to the United States in 1978 for a better life. He spent most of his time working with motorcycles, simply making a living for his family in the U.S. and back in Vietnam. However, after various jobs, he began spending time at the local Los Angeles casinos in the card rooms. That’s when David found poker.

David played numerous tournaments as far back as the late 1990’s with a significant number of final table finishes and wins. But during the past decade, he befriended several well-known pros, most notably David “The Dragon” Pham. Pham saw the potential in his friend and helped him improve various aspects of his game. Eventually, as progress became evident, he played more and more higher buy-in events.

In 2007, David made an impact on the World Series of Poker, where he finished 14^th out of over 6000 players for his biggest payday to date of $429,114. After that performance, he began playing World Poker Tour events – and cashing. In the first four months of 2008, he cashed in four WPT tournaments, most notably of which was his amazing run at the Borgata Poker Classic. His brute aggression throughout the tournament turned heads, and he finished second only to Gavin Griffin. And to follow-up that $737,685 second place finish, he ended up in eight place only two months later at the Bay 101 Shooting Stars main event.