Steve Sung is so serious about poker that he and his friends rent houses outside the Las Vegas strip, two enormous dual-level abodes that sit in a neighborhood of suburban yuppies. For two months, this is home for Sung, 23, and his young, single, poker-playing comrades, all of whom roll out of bed for one reason only: to call bluffs at a nearby casino. 

Both houses have a transitory feel; furniture and décor are sparse, but the tables and floors are cluttered with packaged food, bottles of Gatorade, laptops and video games. While roommates, donning streetgear and diamond earrings, gather in the kitchen to exchange poker tips, Sung, a boyish and soft-spoken South Korean native, remains outside in the 103-degree swelter, watching even more roommates maneuver a remote-controlled airplane over their luxury SUVs.

If they sound like spoiled rich kids unrestrained by parents, debt or rules, it’s because they are. But Sung, Nam Le (“The Man”), Quinn Do (“The Mighty”) and J.C. Tran aren’t blowing away an inheritance or trust fund. Rather, they’re professional pokers players who’ve earned millions off their wins. Sure, as full-time gamblers, they don’t have to clock into a 9-to-5 like most Americans, but they still need to be somewhere every day, whether it’s at the Rio in Vegas or the Venetian in Macau.

In early June, Sung arrived in Las Vegas to compete in the 2008 World Series of Poker, held from May to July at the Rio Hotel and Casino (with a final event slated for November). He’d just returned from the Asian Poker Tour in the Philippines — a competition that also makes stops in China, Singapore and South Korea — and when he isn’t jet-setting to tournaments, he’s at home in Tustin, Calif., playing online poker eight hours a day (going by the poker screen name MuGGyLiCiOuS).

Sung, who grew up with a gambler father, was exposed to the game as a child. During his rookie years, he practiced at casinos illegally and set a goal to win $100 per day. “But that escalated to $10,000,” he says. “When I started, I would lose hundreds, thousands,” adding sheepishly, “then hundreds of thousands. A million. I’ve gambled more than what a person makes in a lifetime

By the time he was 18, he’d gone pro. As of this year, Sung has earned more than $1.4 million, and is known in the poker world for an “ultra-aggressive” technique that’s resulted in wins — and losses — amounting to a million dollars in one day.

“I’m not just a high roller,” Sung says. “I’m the highest.”

The World Series of Poker, held annually since 1970, is arguably how poker transformed from a seedy, smoke-filled distraction into a legitimate and thriving spectator sport. As one of the best Korean American players out there, Sung perhaps exemplifies what the new face of poker is all about: young, successful and filthy rich. In joining the rapidly-growing population of celebrity pros, he hopes to stimulate a positive image of the still-stigmatized sport. “I want poker to get bigger, to get nationalized,” he says. “To help people see that it’s more than a gambling game, but a game that requires skill. When it comes down to it, poker isn’t about luck at all.”