Famous Poker Players: Eric Seidel

Among the quietest, least known outside of poker circles, and yet most respected and most successful of all professional poker players is Erik Seidel.

"I think patience is one of the skills I have, malleability another perhaps," says Erik Seidel, known by his peers as one of the greatest No Limit Hold'em players in the world. Erik Seidel is also one of the world's famous poker players for another reason: the exciting Final Table showdown that he played (and lost) against the great Johnny Chan at the 1988 World Series of Poker was filmed and some of the footage used to make the movie "Rounders".

Erik is known, also, as another intellectual giant of the Texas Hold'em world along with the likes of Annie Duke's brother Howard Lederer and game theory master and MIT graduate Chris "Jesus" Ferguson. His gaming career began as a college-dropout backgammon tournament player in the late 1970s before he discovered a love and talent for poker. He then became a professional Wall Street trader who played poker on the side in the mid-1980s. These days, he is a professional poker player who invests in Wall Street on the side.

Erik's incredible achievements in Texas Hold'em include eight WSOP bracelets, a World Poker Tour championship (where he won $993,000), and over $9.2 million in total tournament earnings in his career (putting him in with the Top 10 poker tournament money winners of all time). So his gambling on cards has paid him more handsomely more than his gambling on stocks (he didn't do so hot on Wall Street in 1987 when the crash hit).

Born in New York city, Erik calls Las Vegas home these days. After his first WSOP appearance, the one where he finished second overall to Chan, he went back to the Final Table of the 1999 WSOP and finished fourth. As for his bracelets, he won his first in 1994 in the $5,000 Limit Hold'em event. In 2005 he went to four different Final Tables at that year's WSOP and went home with his seventh bracelet. After he won his eighth WSOP bracelet in 2007, he moved into a tie for the fourth most career bracelets ever with the legendary Johnny Moss. His WPT championship came in 2008 at the Foxwoods Poker Classic. At that year's WSOP he went to two final tables; he took fifth place in the $10,000 World Championship 7-Card Stud tournament and placed fourth in the $1500 Pot-Limit Omaha tournament.

Besides investing and poker, Erik's keen interests include music and playing tennis--oh, and his wife. Erik is also a member of Full Tilt Poker. So, if you're rarin' to go up against one of the world's greatest professional poker players, you can find him online there.

Exit Famous Poker Players: Eric Seidel » Learn Texas Holdem Poker