Erik Seidel’s blistering start to 2011 has continued as he took down the $25,000 High Roller event at the LA Poker Classic for a cool $144,570. Usually such a victory would hardly be reported on but this win is different as it has allowed Seidel to leapfrog the mighty Phil Ivey in the all-time money listings.
Seidel’s form this year has been nothing short of fantastic, having made five final tables, won two tournaments outright and netted $3,592,284 in winnings! What is even more amazing is most of Seidel’s money has come from the High Roller events, tournaments with a larger than usual entry fee that usually result in much smaller fields but much obviously much tougher.
He kicked off the year with a third place finish in the $5,000 Six-handed event at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure for $46,560 and he followed that up with a fourth place finish in the $25,000 High Roller at the same festival, a result that saw him take home $295,960. The eight-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner then jetted off to the Aussie Millions where he came third in the AUD$100,000 buy-in High Roller before winning the most expensive tournament in poker history, an AUD$250,000 buy-in. That result alone saw his winnings boosted by $2,472,555. His most recent victory takes his lifetime winnings from live tournaments to $13,947,297 putting him $87,353 in front of Ivey and just $168,895 behind the current leader, Daniel Negreanu.
Seidel was originally a tournament backgammon player and a stock market trader before he moved onto poker. He was part of the group of players from the famous Mayfair Club in New York, a club that has kick-started the careers of the likes of Dan Harrington, Stu Ungar and Howard Lederer. Here he specialised in cash games but he admits to preferring tournament poker to cash games despite the increased variance involved in the former.
The Las Vegas based pro has tournament cashes dating back to 1998, in fact his first ever major tournament was the 1998 World Series Main Event which he finished as runner-up to Johnny Chan for $280,000. The final hand was even immortalised on the silver screen in the film Rounders. He has since gone on to cash a further 59 times at the WSOP and with the 2011 edition being just around the corner I would not bet against him surpassing Negreanu’s total or adding another bracelet to his already impressive resume.
Figures Courtesy of Hendon Mob.
