Erik Seidel has won more than $16 million in lifetime live tournaments. That number only includes public live tournaments, and doesn’t include private tournaments or cash games. With the kind of bank roll this consistent pro has, it would be very difficult to guess just how much he has won in private games with the rich businessmen looking to play a big name pro.
Seidel owns eight World Series of Poker bracelets. In 2010, he was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame. And to put a feather in the cap of his already impressive career, Seidel is currently putting together one of the most impressive heaters ever seen in poker. In just 9 months, Seidel has earned $6.4 million in live tournaments. Earlier this year, thanks to his heater, Seidel passed Daniel Negreanu to become poker’s all-time top earner, measured by live tournaments. Seidel beat Chris Moneymaker in the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship to perform the swap into first place.
The point is this: we talk a lot about “Who is the best poker player in the game today?” We hear some historical arguments for Phil Hellmuth, maybe some nostalgia prompts some to tout Doyle Brunson as the best, but nine times out of ten, the answer is Phil Ivey. You know who has been rarely mentioned, until 2011? Erik Seidel. He’s well-known for being the best poker player in the world…at scoring second place. The pro has a litany of second place finishes to his name. And while the question of “best poker player” can never be satisfactorily answered for most minds, I’ll tell you this: if I had $1 million to stake any player with, it wouldn’t be Ivey, Hellmuth, Dwan, Negreanu, or almost anybody else out there on the public scene. It would be Seidel.
You surely remember the very famous (thanks to ‘Rounders’) finish to the 1988 WSOP. Seidel engineers a spectacular flame-out to take a second place finish to Johnny Chan (video below). Seidel gets slaughtered in this hand, by his own doing. Yet another second place… But you know what’s amazing? Seidel, sitting on a giant heap of $16 million, has won more than twice what Johnny Chan has in the same period of time since then. Chan sits in 18th on the all time money list. Seidel is number 1. In fact, if you completely ignore Seidel’s incredible 2011 run, he would still have won $2 million more than Chan.
I’m not saying Seidel is the best poker player who ever was, but he certainly is the game’s best money machine. I’m saying that what Seidel is getting in 2011, the recognition, notice, and fame, is long overdue.