Erik Seidel - Part I<P>A Man of Many Talents, a Versatile Role Model, a True Champion

When I met Erik Seidel for lunch at his spacious home in a gated-community suburb of Las Vegas, he could have been wearing some impressive hardware on his wrists – namely, the four gold bracelets he has won at the World Series of Poker. But Seidel is far too modest and laid-back for that routine. Instead, he was sporting tennis shoes and sweats, standard attire for an athletically fit 41-year-old just returning from a workout at the local gym. "I'm getting in shape for the Series," the 6-foot-6-inch poker pro explained as he spread assorted sushi fresh from Wild Oats on the antique pine harvest table in his breakfast room. By the time that Seidel, the all-time top money winner in limit hold'em events at the WSOP, begins his rigorous 2001 Series agenda, he will have played two demanding "warm-up" tournaments – Bay 101's noted Shooting Star event (where he had a $1,000 bounty on his head) and Jack Binion's World Poker Open.

A professional backgammon player as a teenager and a pro poker player by the age of 28, Seidel was born in the Big Apple, where he attended Brooklyn College. He also has had a third occupation as a trader on Wall Street, an on-and-off pursuit of his for the past 16 years or so. To paraphrase the Matt Damon movie title, "The Talented Mr. Seidel" and I began by talking about the first of his three interests in a relaxed and insightful interview dotted by his keen sense of humor, innate honesty, and warm personality.

Erik Seidel: I began making my living at backgammon at age 17, and got involved with poker through it. I started going to Las Vegas for backgammon tournaments – the World Backgammon Amateur Championship and a few other major events. I knew a couple of high-limit poker players in Vegas, and in 1985 while I was there for a backgammon tournament, I thought that maybe I should give poker a try. I began by playing $1-$2 limit and somehow won, which was incredible because I was ridiculously bad. I returned home with the "bug" and started playing poker with some of the guys I knew at the Mayfair Club – Steve Zolotow and Bob Beinish. We played for very small stakes using backgammon chips. The Mayfair Club, run by the bridge legend Al Roth, originally was a bridge and backgammon club, but eventually it turned into a poker club until it recently shut its doors. A lot of the other players at the Mayfair started to play with us until poker became a regular thing at the club. However after a while, I took a hiatus from gambling and went to work.

Dana Smith: Mercy, are we talking about a 9-to-5 routine here?!

ES: Yes. I had a couple of friends who were top backgammon players, Dick Furlaud and David Leibowitz, who were working at Paine Webber and thought that I might have the right skills to be a trader. I was lucky in that they put a lot of trust in me right away, and within three months, I was trading. From there, I started trading options for Roger Low, who was a great backgammon player before he became a highly successful options trader. Then came the crash of 1987 and I was out of work. That's when I began playing poker much more seriously. I was pretty cautious at first. There was one guy in the game who was a "live one," so I'd wait until he was there to play. Eventually, I gained enough confidence to play every day. We were playing $25-$50 blinds, which was really $12.50-$25 because we settled the game for half.

We had an 11-handed no-limit hold'em game about three days a week that was a great place to learn, because several of the guys in the game already were excellent players. As a result, many others developed into good players. There were some very tough players in that game – Howard Lederer, Jay Heimowitz, Steve Zolotow, Noli Francisco, Billy Horan, Jason Lester, and Dan Harrington. After the poker, we'd go out and talk about hands, and that helped a lot of us develop. It was a fun atmosphere. And it was great to be there with all of those experienced players and still be able to make a profit.

By late 1987, I was doing very well and received some encouragement from a couple of the players in the game that I should go to Vegas to play in the World Series. So, I came out in 1988 and played nine single-table satellites, and went zero for nine. And I played one no-limit hold'em event plus the championship tournament, in which I finished second to Johnny Chan.

DS: In the movie Rounders, Matt Damon's character watched a videotape of you and Chan dueling at the final table. It's hard to believe that it was only the second tournament you'd ever played.

ES: I first heard about Johnny from Paul Magriel, the backgammon master and author. Long before Johnny had won anything, Paul told me that Chan was the best no-limit player in the world. So, I knew of him, especially since he had won the World Series championship the year before in 1987, but I had never met him.

DS: Did you feel intimidated playing Chan for such high stakes?

ES: (laughing) Now the truth can be told! It was surreal to find myself heads up with him at the final table. I was pretty bad in those days, especially shorthanded. I really didn't know what I was doing, because I was accustomed to playing in a full 11-handed game, and that's an entirely different thing from playing shorthanded. So, I was trying to figure it out while I was playing him, but I wasn't very successful at it.

DS: Hey, you must've been somewhat successful, since you had passed up several other players shorthanded.

ES: I probably had a combination of good instincts and good luck, but once it got to just the two of us, I felt uncomfortable. I just didn't have any real feel as to how I should be playing the structure or the relative hand values heads up. I remember looking at the whole scene, the lights and cameras and all of those chips, and thinking, "What in the world am I doing here playing heads up for the world championship?!" A similar thing happened with Kevin McBride when he faced Scotty Nguyen in 1998. Whenever I hear anyone criticize McBride, I feel the need to defend him, because I know exactly what he was going through.

DS: Did a mental message board light up that said, "I'd better learn how to play shorthanded?"

ES: Yes, exactly. It was pretty awful to be in such a great spot and to be so unprepared for it.

DS: Was there a memorable hand that you played with Chan?

ES: Fairly early on, he moved in with a draw and I called him with an ace high. I would have won the championship, but he made the hand and doubled through me. I had no idea what I was doing at the time, and in the same situation today, I'd fold the hand. Then there was another hand in which he had pocket eights and I had nines. We got it all in and I won the hand, but by then he had so many chips that he still had plenty of ammo left. A couple of friends who had a piece of me flew out for the last day, along with my wife, Ruah, and my older brother Karl flew in from Los Angeles. It was really fun to hear the crowd every hand rooting one way or the other.

DS: So, you went back home with a pocketful of cash.

ES: It felt great to do so well, but I had pieced myself out in several places, so I didn't win a great deal of money. Still, it was the most incredible experience – to play for four days and get heads up with Chan – just knowing that I could do it, that I could play at that level. In some ways, it was the most awful tournament I've had, because I played so badly heads up, yet it also was the most exhilarating. I left that tournament with the feeling that I could play at the highest levels. Although I still was very raw, I had learned a lot during that whole event and didn't think that I was that far removed from the people who were considered to be the best.

DS: A few months after your run-in with Chan, you faced another awesome poker player heads up at the Bicycle Club's $2,500 no-limit hold'em tournament.

ES: Yes, the brash, young Phil Hellmuth. At that time, I didn't know him; no one knew him. During the break, I was trying to relax when he came up to me to introduce himself. That night we found ourselves heads up at the final table. I won the tournament, and the next day Phil won the $5,000 no-limit event.

DS: In contrast to your first heads-up battle, was it fun playing Hellmuth?

ES: Yes. It was back-and-forth between us for a long time. I could see right away that he was an excellent player – plus he told me so himself!

DS: Hellmuth went on to win the World Series championship the next year against Chan, who was trying for his third consecutive victory. Then, you and Hellmuth played heads up at the final table of the 1992 $2,500 limit hold'em event at the Series, which you won. A few days later, Hellmuth won the $5,000 limit hold'em tournament. Do I see a pattern here? First you beat Hellmuth and then he beats everybody else in a later event. Two years later, you won the $5,000 limit hold'em title, and in 1997, you were at the final table of all three limit hold'em tournaments at the World Series.

ES: Three chances and I couldn't finish one of them off! Clearly, there's a hole that needs to be patched up.

DS: Don't be too modest, Erik, I've been told that you're the best limit hold'em player in the tournament world. Your next appearance at the final table of the championship event at the World Series was in 1999, when you finished fourth to Irishman Noel Furlong. What happened with you at the final table?

ES: It was far more comfortable for me the second time around, although I started with the lowest number of chips, the same way that I started in '88. When you're low on chips, you're limited in terms of the decisions that you can make. You just have to pick a spot and go with it, so I was trying to find spots where I could double up a couple of times to give myself a shot to win it. I built my chips up to a little more than $400,000 before my good hands ran out. Padraig Parkinson raised on the button with an A-K, and I moved in from the small blind with an A-Q. I hit a queen on the flop and things were looking good – until a king came on the river and sent me home in fourth place. I really had been hoping to move up to the top three so that I could be in contention, but fourth was $100,000 better than I woke up with that morning, so I wasn't unhappy. Plus, the second time around I thought that I made some very good decisions, so I left the tournament without any real regrets, and thought I had played my A-game. The most awful feeling is when you get knocked out of a tournament and you believe that you played badly.

DS: Some say that mistakes are the No. 1 cause of any player's demise in a tournament. Is that true?

ES: Yes. A high percentage of the time when you get knocked out, it is because you've done something wrong. I'd much rather get drawn out on, because when you make a mistake, it can stay with you for a long time.

DS: Like maybe forever?! Just kidding. Actually, that final table was quite an international event, with two Irishmen, one Swiss player, and three Americans.

ES: Yes. Huck Seed, the 1996 world champion, was there with us, along with Alan Goehring, an amateur from New York who finished second. Huck really wasn't picking up any hands, and Noel had been sitting behind him raising every time Huck came into a pot. I think that Huck finally felt that he had to take a stand, so he limped, and when Noel raised, Huck moved in with a J-8. Noel called with an A-3. Talk about a bad read, I thought that because Noel had called Huck so quickly, he must've had something like a pair of kings. It was quite a sequence – I guess Noel sensed what Huck was trying to do and just called him down.

DS: I've heard people say that Furlong gambled quite a bit at the final table.

ES: He was very aggressive. I don't know of any other player who would have made that call against Huck. It probably was the critical play for Noel, because it gave him a lot of chips, eliminated a major threat in Huck, and put him in the driver's seat to win the title. And I think that Noel's victory was a very good win for poker in several ways. It exposed a lot more European players to the World Series, and Noel was the first nonprofessional poker player to win the tournament in 21 years (amateur Hal Fowler won it in 1979). Because of Noel's victory, I think that a lot of people now look at the World Series in a different way – "If he can do it, why can't I?" A similar thing happened in 1998 when Kevin McBride placed second. A lot of players saw him play and probably thought, "I can play as well as that. I'll give it a shot and maybe I'll win a million, too." Then we returned to form in 2000 when two world-class players, Chris Ferguson and T.J. Cloutier, battled heads up for the title at the final table.

DS: Any comments about that final table?

ES: I was just happy to see that it was between the two of them, and I enjoyed seeing them battle it out. I don't know Chris very well, but he always seems to be a gentleman, and I like the way that he plays, so it was nice to see him in there. And T.J. – well, T.J. is a terrific player, probably the best tournament player in the world. It was unfortunate that one of them had to lose. It was especially unfortunate for T.J. that after working his way up the ladder, he got it all in with the best hand, did everything that he was supposed to do, and lost. It's a very nice consolation, however, that he is the biggest World Series money winner of all time.

DS: Do you think that when a player takes a genuinely bad beat like that when so much is at stake, it rattles his chains for a long time to come?

ES: I think it can, but in T.J.'s case, he's been through it many, many times, and he has a knack for handling things like that. I'm sure that it has stuck with him, but I don't think that it has affected his game at all.

DS: I was thinking of the time at the final table in 1984 when Cowboy Wolford made his classic bluff against Jesse Alto in a big pot, which apparently caused Alto to go on tilt and blow off all of his chips to Jack Keller, who won the title.

ES: Certainly, you have to fight the instinct to throw off your chips when bad things happen or when you aren't running well. The better you can manage the emotional swings of a tournament, the more likely you are to make good decisions.

DS: What do you do when bad things happen to good people like you?

ES: I just try to regain my focus and concentrate on the game. For me, the most helpful thing is to get back into thinking about and playing the game in front of me. The better I can focus, the faster those disruptive thoughts and feelings dissipate. Fortunately, I'm aided by a very weak memory for those things – I won't even remember most of those beats two weeks, or even two hours, later.

One of the great challenges of poker is to think well through all situations. When you can do that, there's an extra thrill involved – here you are, things have gone badly, and yet you're still sitting there as tough as you were when you came in. And that can be very discouraging to other players.

DS: Do you mean that because you can keep your head after a beat, your opponents are demoralized by the fact that you're still playing tough?

ES: Sure. Let them tilt because you're not!

Author's note: In the second part of this interview, Seidel discusses several of the major issues in the poker world today.