Man mistakenly thinks he’s sitting next to John Juanda on a plane

SOMEWHERE OVER NORTHWEST INDIANA — Dave Thompson was so excited when he sat down on his connection flight from O’Hare to Dulles Thursday night, he could barely speak.

“I sat down, and I looked over, and I realize, ‘Holy shit, I’m sitting next to John Juanda, the famous poker player,’” Thompson said. “I was so excited. I mean, I watch this guy on TV all the time, and I’m just such a huge fan of his. He’s really amazing.”

Thompson, realizing that this was his opportunity to talk with a poker great, tried to play it cool as he engaged the man he perceived to be Juanda in conversation.

“In retrospect, I should have just asked him if he was John Juanda, the poker player,” Thompson said. “Instead, I go, ‘You been playin’ much poker recently?’ The guy goes, ‘A little.’ So I asked him if he had played in the World Series of Poker recently, and he said that he hadn’t, because his wife wouldn’t let him, but that his buddy Jeff did have a huge, 24-person, $50 buy-in no-limit tournament recently, and that he finished third. That’s when it occurred to me that it might not be John Juanda.”

It turns out that the man in question was not John Juanda, but was actually Calvin Chang, a software engineer who lives in Reston, Va., and was in Chicago for a conference.

“I was so embarrassed,” Thompson said. “Here I think it’s going to be one of my all-time poker playing heroes sitting next to me, and it turns out it’s just some chump who probably thinks that King-Ten is the nuts. And what’s worse, he clearly realizes that all Asian people sort of look the same to me.”

Nevertheless, Thompson gamely continued to chat with Chang about his life, learning that Chang had indeed recently been to Vegas for a bachelor’s party, where he played some $2-$4 limit poker at the Venetian and “got rivered like twenty times.” Thompson also learned that Chang recently got a raise and now makes $67,000 a year, with benefits.

It’s going to be tough for this sport to sweep any nations, but it’s still pretty frickin’ cool!