About the author

Elton Tsang 曾加威

Author of The Game of Life · Welcome to Hotel Earth

Elton Tsang (曾加威) wrote The Game of Life, a short, plain book about choosing love over fear — and gave it away. It is free to read, to listen to and to download, in English, 简体中文 and 繁體中文, and free to pass on.

Before the book

For most of his adult life Elton was known for something else: poker. Based in Hong Kong, he spent years at the table. In 2016 he won the Big One for One Drop in Monte Carlo — an invitational charity tournament for recreational players, with part of every entry given to the One Drop Foundation’s clean-water projects — and he has since won two titles on the Triton series. By the usual measures, that makes him one of the most successful poker players Hong Kong has produced.

He would put it differently. He has said he was lucky — lucky to be invited, lucky to win — and that he never thought of himself as the best player at the table. The results were real; so was the pain underneath them. This book came from what he learned away from the table. He brings up the cards only because they taught him one thing he still uses every day: play each hand with all your heart, then let go of the result.

In his own words

Healing did not come all at once, and it did not come from money or winning. It started with sitting down and facing the grief honestly, with help — a good therapist was the first real step. Then I sat in silence for ten days at a meditation retreat and watched my own pain come and go like weather, and I realized something simple that changed my life: everything comes and goes, including the pain.

But the deepest realization came later, in a plant medicine ceremony. I went in with real intentions — honest questions about life. And the answer that came back was so simple it almost made me laugh: don't take life so seriously. Life is just a game. Welcome to Hotel Earth. That was it. That one line cracked everything open. I saw the whole truth of it — that all of this, the wins, the losses, the people, the things, is a game. A beautiful game, worth playing with all your heart. But a game. We are all just guests checked into this hotel for one stay — and even if that stay runs a few decades, we all check out in the end, so why carry it so heavily?

From the first chapter, How I Got Here