Yoshio Nakano is a professional poker

Poker

Poker is a family of card games that share betting rules and usually hand rankings. Poker games differ in how the cards are dealt, how hands may be formed, whether the high or low hand wins the pot in a showdown , limits on bet sizes, and how many rounds of betting are allowed.In most modern poker...

 player and entrepreneur who resides in Long Beach, California

Long Beach, California

Long Beach is a city situated in Los Angeles County in Southern California, on the Pacific coast of the United States. The city is the 36th-largest city in the nation and the seventh-largest in California. As of 2010, its population was 462,257...

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He has played professionally for over 20 years and is a long-time regular at high stakes poker tables at the Bicycle Casino

Bicycle Casino

The Bicycle Casino is the world's second largest poker cardroom.Founded by George Hardie Sr. in 1984, located in Bell Gardens, California, the Bicycle Casino offers a wide variety of poker games and limits, as well as pai gow poker, panguingue and California blackjack.Financing to build the casino...

 in Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

. He was a co-founder and a "resident pro" at the online poker

Online poker

Online poker is the game of poker played over the Internet. It has been partly responsible for a dramatic increase in the number of poker players worldwide...

 site PokerBlue, before it closed down in March 2007.

He represented Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 in the inaugural Intercontinental Poker Championship

Intercontinental Poker Championship

The Intercontinental Poker Championship is a poker tournament featuring professional poker players representing various nations. 21 players competed in the inaugural event, which was taped at Palms Hotel and Casino April 14-16, 2006, and aired on CBS for seven weeks beginning June 17, 2006...

. Nakano defeated Australian Tony G

Tony G

Antanas Guoga , more commonly known as Tony G, is a businessman and professional poker player. As a child, he was the Rubik's Cube champion of Lithuania before moving to Melbourne, Australia at the age of 11. He has played poker since the age of 18, and is known for his outlandish table talk and...

two out of three matches at the heads up final table to take down the $350,000 first place money. In the final hand, Nakano's held up against Tony G's on a board of .

As of 2008, Nakano's live tournament winnings exceed $610,000.