Even as a 12-year-old, Erik Seidel could pull a nice little bluff. Like the night he got a chance to make a few bucks appearing on the old network television show "To Tell the Truth," pretending to be the youngest of all comic book illustrators.
Until that evening, what Seidel knew about comic books was that he had enjoyed reading them.
But illustrating them? Please!
He was a fast study, managing to convince two of the show's four panelists that he was indeed the youngest ever illustrator. That added up to $500 - $250 for each wrong vote by the four panelists. Not bad when you're 12.
Flash forward a lot of years and the 47-year-old Seidel's bluffing involves far bigger stakes. There are big games and big issues, and as a thinking man's poker player he's not inclined to leave either alone.
Seidel was an unhappy camper as he considered the look of poker's changing landscape several years back. Those tiny cameras that let home television viewers see a player's hole cards were changing the game, boosting poker to heights of appeal it had never visited before.
Poker was becoming a spectator sport, thanks to the stories told by those cameras. This was good for the TV viewer, but bad for the poker player whose stock in trade was projecting impressions that might have nothing to do with the cards he was holding.
A stone, cold bluff might look like pocket aces until it was laid out for all the world to see on television.
Was the world of poker ready for so much openness? His first thought was there was no way he was going to show his hole cards to a television audience.
"Poker is a game about information," Seidel would argue. He felt very uneasy giving away the sort of information that could one day be used against him.
"The more information people have, the more prepared they are to play against you."
But there was this enticing upside. New technology was attracting audiences and players, creating bigger paydays than ever.
So Seidel grumbled but eventually let his thinking turn the corner. Life was full of little trade-offs. He would start showing his hole cards if that was what the new era of big money tournaments was going to require.
The thing about Seidel . . . he does not stand out in a crowd of new era success stories that often feature loud talkers and trash talkers, people with a personality that enters the room 10 minutes before they do.
Highly regarded poker pro and author Barry Greenstein, who has publicly rated many of the best-known poker talents, says of Seidel, "He is a very down to earth person, a trait that works against him since buffoonery makes for better television. He is easily one of the top four or five no limit hold'em tournament players but is often overlooked."
This may also have something to do with the fact Seidel does not maintain an agenda of high profile projects. There are no books, film projects or DVDs in the works.
"Not even a reality show," he grins. "What I'm doing right now is trying not to work too hard. What people see is the natural me. There are people who are out there promoting themselves, but in many cases it is just an extension of their personality . . .
"Television certainly seems to be attracted to charismatic players," shaking his head like there should be a better way, "because when I look at people like John Juanda or Allen Cunningham - they're really brilliant players - I think it is too bad the public does not get as much exposure to them as the guys jumping around making a lot of noise trying to attract the attention of the camera."
More than a hundred tournament cashes and close to $5.7 million in official tournament prize money helps make this low-key approach to life and poker possible. He is a team member at Full Tilt Poker. That's where he spends his online time.
The Full Tilt thing is largely the result of his long friendship with the website's main man Howard Lederer, whom Seidel has known since their long ago gameplaying days at New York's Mayfair Club.
Seidel has been so successful for so long - he finished second in the World Series of Poker's 1988 main event, the first year he played it - that many of the scenes from the Seidel highlights reel are relatively well known.
There are the seven first place bracelets at the World Series of Poker, the first of them in 1992, as he shouldered his way toward the heights occupied by professional poker's elite.
There were the years spent playing backgammon, and later poker, at the Mayfair, where he first became acquainted with the likes of Lederer, Dan Harrington and Jay Heimowitz.
Seidel was a native New Yorker who imagined he would find some way to follow his parents into the documentary film business.
That's the way he was looking at his future as he took a shot at earning a degree from Hunter College. But it eventually became apparent the college thing was not going to work. Seidel's passion for backgammon kept getting in the way. Okay, so forget college, which is what he did. Backgammon was an irresistible distraction.
"I was making a good living playing backgammon and it was very hard to also try and focus on school. Eventually I just said . . ." He shrugs and his words trail off, as though there is not much more to say on the subject. Seidel was coming to Las Vegas for the backgammon tournaments long before he got serious about poker.
"I knew and admired people like Chip Reese, Stu Ungar and Puggy (Pearson) but I didn't really have a desire to focus on poker when I first started coming to Vegas. I just never thought that I could be one of them or that I could play poker professionally. I knew Chip, Stu and Puggy because they were also guys who played backgammon.
The transition to poker came during one of his Las Vegas backgammon trips when he happened to sit down in a game.
"It was tiny stakes, oneand two-dollar stuff, but I loved it and went back to New York and started playing with a couple of friends and a game kind of developed out of that. This is actually how the Mayfair poker game got started."
Thinking about this and how everything came together, he says, "It was a great environment in which to learn because, at least at the beginning, there were a lot of very bad players, but we were all bad, you know, and I was able to learn and not lose money . . .
"Eventually, some great pros started coming into the game and we got to watch people like Jay Heimowitz and Howard (Lederer)."
Seidel went to work on Wall Street in the mid-1980s, but the 1987 crash mostly wiped out his positions and he woke up one day saying, okay, what do I do now?
He headed back to the Mayfair and the games there, taking it cautiously at first. "I did not a lot of confidence in my playing ability." But time goes by and his confidence and bankroll began to grow and by early 1988 things just, well, they took off.
"I got on a real roll. I was really winning a lot in the game at the Mayfair. Howard was a good friend at that time and he was very helpful in terms of helping me understand the game. He says to me that I really ought to think of going out to the World Series."
"Yeah, sure," was Seidel's first reaction.
"It seemed crazy to me, but I went. Took a long list of partners to finance my entry in the main event, but things worked out well and I finished second. That was kind of the start of me thinking of myself as a professional poker player."
Seidel had been on Wall Street for a couple years before the 1988 World Series as an options trader on the floor of the American Stock Exchange. After the Series he played poker for a while before deciding to go back to Wall Street.
There was a lot of action with this other kind of gambling but remembering the way he felt, "It was not nearly as much fun as playing poker."
And so he kept playing poker, mostly tournaments, and won the first of his seven World Series bracelets in 1992, at a limit hold'em event.
Seidel focuses almost entirely on tournament action now, except when playing on the Internet as a member of the Full Tilt team.
He does not miss the chance to use his high profile to talk about changing public policy as it concerns poker.
"I think it is too bad that poker has been caught up in legislation that mostly seems to be aimed at sport betting. I wish there was some kind of legal carve-out for poker. Poker has been in some cases a kind of innocent bystander in this battle against sport betting . . . "It would be nice to see the justice department to clarify its position.
"It's so hypocritical for legislators - at least some of them - to be against poker but to be in favor of betting on horses."
Who can explain it, he seems to say.
