Erik Seidel

Erik Seidel is an eight time World Series of Poker bracelet winner with career earnings of over $9 million dollars. His logical and systematic style is his advantage and comes from his several years of experience in New York trading stocks and playing Backgammon.

Erik was born in New York City and raised there as well. He actually got his start as a professional backgammon player and made the transition to poker after a period of years trading stocks on Wall Street. He played backgammon at the well known Mayfair, and quickly left Brooklyn College to go professional. After eight years and wanting a steady paycheck, Seidel became a stockbroker. He did still play in the evenings and eventually began to play poker as well at the Mayfair. Those key formative years of learning shaped the player that he has become today. Long gone are the days of a stock broker playing poker on the side. He and his wife moved to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1995 and he is now a full time professional poker player.

Being analytical in nature, his advantage is his ability to dissect the game and his opponents and use this to his favor. His preference is for No Limit games and he is well respected by his peers.

In total he has earned eighteen first place finishes, and cashed in 133 times. Currently, Erik is ranked number 248 on the roster of professional poker players. Erik’s first bracelet was earned in 1994 in the $5K Limit Hold’em tournament. To date this year, he has five finishes, and three are top ten slots. He also holds a unique position, a ranking on both the Bellagio and World Series of Poker top earners lists. This is something that is not held by any other players.

Perhaps his most well known tournament was actually his first World Series of Poker game in 1988. He made it to the final table and faced the legendary Johnny Chan. Erik lost and came in second. This moment lives on in history and even made it to the silver screen as a scene in the film, “Rounders” starring Matt Damon. Since that first tournament, he has grown into a respectable player on the professional circuit.

Now at the age of 50 with eight bracelets under his belt, Erik continues to live in Las Vegas with his wife and children. His outside interests include playing tennis and a passion for music. On his website, www.erikseidel.com, he shares his love for music with his fans and calls it an “obsession”. A paid sponsorship to Full Tilt Poker is a reward that he is very proud of, and included a series of commercials for the website.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 at 08:54 and is filed under Poker Pros. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.