It took a trip to Paradise, but Erik Seidel is now a member of the very exclusive 10 World Series of Poker bracelets club.
Seidel, 64, picked up WSOP bracelet number ten by winning the $50,000 Super High Roller event at the WSOP Paradise series currently running at Atlantis Casino in the Bahamas. He was part of a 137 entry field which created a prize pool of $6.85 million. He cashed $1,704,400.
Seidel joins Johnny Chan, Phil Ivey, and the late Doyle Brunson in a four-way tie with 10 WSOP bracelets. Phil Hellmuth still sits atop the leaderboard with 17.
“It really is nice to get to double digits,” Seidel said, according to the WSOP. “Any time you win a bracelet is just an incredibly special thing. To get to ten, I don’t know, it’s a beautiful feeling. It’s just so nice when things go well like this.”
Seidel grew up in New York, and as a younger man, played backgammon for money at the long-closed Mayfair Club, where he eventually started paying poker with the likes of Stu Ungar, Jay Heimowitz, Mickey Appleman, Howard Lederer, Jason Lester, Steve Zolotow, Paul Magriel, and Dan Harrington.
In 1988, he nearly won his first WSOP bracelet in the Main Event, but instead welded himself to fellow Poker Hall of Famer Chan by being knocked-out as runner-up in a hand that will forever live in poker immortality thanks to it being featured in the movie Rounders.
His first bracelet came in a $2,500 limit hold’em event in 1992, and he managed to win two more in 1993 and 1994 ($2,500 Omaha hi/lo and $5,000 limit hold’em).
His fourth came in a $5,000 no-limit 2-7 lowball draw event in 1998, and his fifth from a $3,000 no limit hold’em event in 2001.
He got to six by winning a $1,500 PLO rebuy event in 2003, seven in a $2,000 no limit event in 2005, and number eight in the $5,000 no-limit 2-7 lowball draw event in 2007.
A 14 year wsop bracelet drought ended in 2021, when he won his ninth bracelet in the $10,000 Super Million High Roller event online (despite making four WSOP final tables in 2010). Two years later, he joined the 10 WSOP bracelet club.
In the 35 years since, he’s won more than $45.5 million playing tournament poker, $9.4 million coming in WSOP events. That puts him at 26 on the WSOP all-time money list.
Seidel is having another impressive year playing tournament poker, cashing a total of 31 times with 13 final tables playing in mostly high roller events with buy-in of $10,000 or more.
Of course, his poker prowess doesn’t start or end with the WSOP.
Seidel is a World Poker Tour champ for winning its event at Foxwoods in 2008, an Aussie Millions champ for taking down the 2010 AUS $10,500 PLO event at the Aussies Millions a year before winning its $250,000 High Roller for a career-best $2.4 million, and a European Poker Tour champ for winning the €100,000 EPT Monte Carlo Grand Final in 2015 — and that’s just the tip of Seidel’s iceberg.
But unlike the one that took out the Titanic that drifted to warm waters and melted away, Seidel has remained a force of nature since his first brush with fame and shows no signs of letting up.
