J. C. Tran (Justin Cuong Van Tran) was born on January 20, 1977 in Vietnam. Tran is the youngest in his large family with seven older brothers and sisters. When J.C. was only two years old his family moved to Sacramento, California. After finishing High School, Tran studied Business Management Information Systems at the California State University in Sacramento. Here he picked up poker and has been crazy about the game ever since.
He started with the home games and then went on playing the $9-$18 game at Capitol Casino in Sacramento. His first big live tournament performance came in 2004 at the World Poker Tour World Poker Finals where he finished fifth and collected $353,850 cash prize. Another big money finish was at the 2005 World Series of Poker (WSOP) where Tran finished fifth in a $2,000 No-Limit Hold’em event and cashed $118,350. The same year, Tran finished seventh in the $10,000 WPT Borgata Poker Open and walked away with $199,820.
The first of Tran's two WSOP bracelets came in 2008. Tran came out on top in a $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em event, a victory worth an impressive $631,170. Bracelet number two came a year later when Tran took down the $2,500 Pot-Limit Omaha event for $235,685.
Tran has two seven-figure scores on his resume. His second-place finish in the $10,000 L.A. Poker Classic in 2007 earned him $1,177,010, with his fifth-place finish in the 2013 WSOP Main Event coming with a career-best haul worth $2,106,893.
The World Poker Tour (WPT) is another tour when Tran has enjoyed much success throughout his career. Indeed, he was named the WPT Player of the year in 2015. Tran has won more than $4.4 million from WPT events, an impressive sum helped by his eight WPT final tables and two outright victories. He won the 2007 World Poker Challenge for $683,473 and the 2014 WPT Rolling Thunder for $302,750.
Although known as a live poker tournament grinder, Tran has form in the online poker world. His largest online score came in 2006 when he triumphed in the PokerStars WCOOP Main Event, an impressive result that came with a $670,194 payout.
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