Unofficial site about Erik Seidel

• Erik Seidel was born on November 6th, 1959 in New York City.
• He attended Brooklyn College although did not graduate.
• Seidel stands 6 feet 5 inches tall
• He is married with children.
• Currently lives in Las Vegas, Nevada.
• Plays online poker exclusively with Team Full Tilt.

Erik Seidel was born in New York City. Like so many professional poker players, he showed great intelligence and a strong competitive streak as a child. He loved games of all description and took up backgammon while he was attending Brooklyn College. This was the first of his forays into professional gamesmanship and he dropped out of college to play backgammon professionally.

Like Howard Lederer, Seidel could often be found at the Mayfair Club playing backgammon and poker and during these eight years he took a few trips to Las Vegas to try his hand at poker, a game he learned from other Mayfair members and one which was becoming increasingly popular.

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It would be a few years yet before Seidel took up professional poker though. After eight years playing professional backgammon he moved into stock broking, another common profession among high-stakes poker players for a more secure career and lifestyle. He continued to play poker though, developing his game and staying well-practised with evening tournament games as well as a few cash tables. Fate had a different plan for him however and when he lost his job in the stock market crash of 1987, he returned to the Mayfair fold.

Only a year later he entered his first World Series of Poker. Signing up to ten events (and busting out of nine of them) he had no idea that his most famous game would be played in the Main Event against Johnny Chan, the defending champion.

Seidel went all-in and lost everything. The green Seidel should have been championed for making it to the final table but instead has been referenced ever since as ‘what not to do’ in a final hand of high-stakes poker. This was only compounded when the movie Rounders recreated the game and unfortunately has become the hand that Seidel is best remembered for. He has gone on to win a massive eight World Series of Poker bracelets with around fifty cash finishes, redeeming himself in the professional poker world.

Seidel bounced back from his spectacular early loss against Chan although he took a career detour back to Wall St in 1990 while still playing high-stakes poker on the side. He placed second in the World Series of Poker $5,000 Hold ‘Em Limit Event in 1991 and the next year found gold in the same event. After additional wins during 1993, in 1994 he won the bracelet for the $5,000 Hold ‘Em Limit Event, confirming his status as a great poker pro and his affinity for Hold ‘Em. He has admitted that stud draw is his weakest event and modestly claims Hold ‘Em as his “favourite” poker style.

It was the following year that Seidel left full time stock brokering for good and he and his wife relocated to Las Vegas so he could play poker full time.

Part of the reason for his high number of World Series of Poker wins has been Seidel’s formidable concentration on tournament rather than cash games. He plays for cash exclusively with Full Tilt poker and has a room of his own that attracts long queues when he’s playing in it.

Erik Seidel is often described as the most overlooked player in poker today. The brash styles of other players make good television viewing and so he is not as well known as some of his fellow pros. He also has a tendency to hide his hole cards during televised games, a move that has not endeared him to the media. Although the players cards are shown only to viewers, he refuses to change his methods, saying that he prefers not to give his opponents footage of his body language to analyse post-game when they have a chance to see the hand he held.

Erik Seidel in a full tilt poker commercial

Erik Seidel may as well have invented the phrase ‘play your cards close to your chest.’ As well as occasionally hiding cards from the cameras, he is always careful to be respectful when he plays, no matter what the outcome. Emotional or dramatic outbursts are the antithesis of Seidel’s style and he prefers to save aggression for his playing. Seidel is averse to sharing his knowledge and has not released the usual array of books, DVDs and other instructional tools. Interviews with Seidel are notorious for being polite but without substance and he is reputed to be better than a politician at dodging questions.

This quiet and understated style has paid well for him. He is one of the top ten money earners of all time with the World Series of Poker. A great example of his money-making skill can be seen in the 2008 Aussie Millions, when his second placing earned him a cool $800,000 and his first placing in the World Poker Tournament Season 5 Foxwoods Poker Classic that landed him a little shy of one million dollars. Throw in his other cash wins for the same time period and the conclusion can only be that it’s not bad for a year’s work.

• His 1988 loss of the World Series of Poker main event was recreated in the movie Rounders.
• He appeared on TV game show ‘To Tell the Truth’ at age 12.
• He is an avid music fan, with is personal website recommending hundreds of albums that he has bought.
• Erik Seidel is one of the top 10 All-Time money winners for World Series of Poker.
• Seidel is the only World Series of Poker player to win titles in three consecutive years.