Mark Seif says it was the 2001 World Series of Poker that made a difference, providing the moment in time when he reached that metaphorical fork in the road and, as the joke goes, decided to take it.
He thought about his career as a lawyer up to that time. Yes, he would tell an acquaintance years later, law had been good to him.
But compared to poker? Gee . . . it was hard not to stifle a yawn.
Poker was another world. There was nothing like playing successful poker to get the juices flowing. Particularly with the level of success Seif was then enjoying.
So he stopped being a lawyer.
"I went home from the 2001 World Series," he remembers, "with something like $700,000 in my pocket," money he had earned in the cash games and not tournament events. This was at a time when the Series was still a fixture at the Binion family's Horseshoe on Fremont Street.
Yes, by the middle of May, which is when the World Series was winding up at that time, Seif knew it was going to be a very good year.
Even bought himself a new gold Rolex to celebrate. All this at a time when the world of poker was still a year or two away from the explosive growth that has characterized the last several years and brought success and additional opportunities to Seif.
Heading back to his home in the spring of 2001 Seif was a man on top of the world. Could life get any better? Besides the hours at the tables he was also doing occasional Internet poker commentary. "I had flirted with the idea of playing poker fulltime, but until then had never really had the guts or the bankroll."
Suddenly, it all seemed to be within reach.
Five years later, he still enjoys the feeling that comes from replaying that life-changing experience in his head.
Because the way things were at the time . . . Seif had graduated from UCLA and Loyola Law School with enough honors to guarantee that he pretty much had his pick of possibilities as a young lawyer. He spent several years in the LA County District Attorney's Office dealing with the nuts and bolts of hundreds of cases that even included the long-running saga of O.J. Simpson.
Eventually he succumbed to the lure of the big money associated with a New Port Beach law firm and the later chance to work as chief counsel to a large leasing firm. He moved to Lake Tahoe and was traveling to LA and Las Vegas on weekends to indulge his passion for poker.
Sometime after declaring himself a poker professional and accumulating some of the successes that made this declaration a convincing one, Seif got the chance in 2004 to become a commentator on the televised action of the World Poker Tour's new Professional Poker Tour.
He had enjoyed his first commentary work in 1999 when he, Nolan Dala and Wendeen Eolis collaborated on Internet coverage of the U.S. Poker Championship show for PokerPages.com.
"We had a lot of fun. Nolan and I did most of the work and to this day I don't think there is a better broadcaster or commentator in the world of poker than Nolan."
The combination of his knowledge of the game, enthusiasm for what was happening and the volume of insights that peppered Dala's work on those programs created a high standard on which Seif would base his PPT work.
As for how he came to the PPT telecasts on the Travel Channel which also airs the WPT shows, "I was doing some work for Absolute Poker in Costa Rica when I got an e-mail (from the PPTproducer) asking me to stop by because he wanted to talk. The PPT offer came out of those conversations.
Seif was the only double bracelet winner at the 2005 World Series of Poker taking firsts in two of the no limit hold 'em events winning a total of nearly $800,000. He's had about 50 tournaments cashes over the years including World Poker Tour events; a total of 14 wins and 25 final tables. He took fourth in the WPT's inaugural stop at the Bicycle Club. Seif's official tournament winnings over the last five years amount to "well over $2 million."
But the way Seif tells it, he began playing poker somewhere around the age of six as part of gatherings that included family and friends. Mostly, he would fill in when regulars failed to show up or were late arriving.
"As time went by I got to play more and more." By the age of 11 he was savvy enough that his dad decided to bar him after a never-to-be-forgotten Kodak moment when Seif bluffed his dad out of a pot.
This was a night when the game was five-card draw and one of the last hands of the evening had come down to Mark and his dad playing heads-up.
Dad had a pair of something and Mark drew one card trying to make either a straight or a flush. After the draw, Dad checked and Mark bet and Dad thought about it before folding his hand. Casually, Dad wanted to know what Mark had made. Was it two pair, a flush, what?
Not a surprising question in what had been a friendly little nickel, dime and quarter game among family and friends. But Mark looked Dad in the eye and said he'd have showed him if he wanted to bet the hand.
Dad's eyes narrowed, he frowned and picked up the cards, checking his son's hand.
Nothing!
Dad had been bluffed and it quickly became apparent his sense of humor was lacking on this long ago evening. Mark was told to give back his winnings, go to his room and was not allowed to play in the game any more.
Dad was not the kind of poker player Seif was showing signs of becoming, even at a very young age.
Seif laughs about it now. "My dad was never much of a poker player. He was a much better businessman." Poker did not get a lot of thought for a number of years until he was 19, in college and working as a waiter at a restaurant where the help got together for an after-work game every once in a while. "I would clean up there pretty good and one night some of the guys started talking about going down to try the games in the Gardena clubs."
Seemed like a good idea.
Seif made the trip and recalls, "I sat down in a $1-$4 stud game and won about $350 the first time I played."
Seif continued with his studies at UCLA and went on to law school, continuing to play two, three, maybe four times a week and when he became a lawyer, well . . .
There was no reason to give up something he enjoyed and Seif continued his visits to the local clubs, finally taking time off from his lawyerly duties in 2000 to attend the World Series. The following year he did the same thing.
"And really cleaned up." Which brought him to that fork in the road. Going home with the $700,000 cashier's check in his pocket, Seif decided it was time to seriously rethink his career plans.
This was during a time when it was hard to find people playing no limit cash games.
Was there an intimidation factor in some of these games, since many of the players tended to be crusty old pros who had been playing cards since before Seif was old enough to bluff his dad. ""Oh yeah," he grins.
"They intimidated me but I wasn't about to let them know it."
What he recalls are the endless attempts to bait and test, metaphorically whacking an opponent with comments calculated to make a difference, expose a weakness.
He remembers the old pro eyeing his stack of chips, pondering a bet and finally inquiring, "So how deep are you kid?"
Seif looked down at his stacks and replied with a figure that represented a slightly inflated estimate of his total.
Minutes later Seif had a chance to turn the inquiry around asking, "And how deep are you?"
"I'm as deep as the Pacific," was the reply. All part of the no limit game, this going back and forth with each other.
Seif's current projects include continuing work with AbsolutePoker.com, the Internet site he has been affiliated with for the last couple years. The site has several marketing gimmicks aimed at young people. One of them is a "very successful win your tuition" promotion. There's a television project that has MTV planning to film the experiences of seven people culled from 3,500 applications. They will go to Costa Rica and work as interns at the Absolute headquarters. Look for this to make it to a small screen near you in early 2007.
Seif also has a book in the works. More about that later and another TV project that calls for him to be a recurring guest host on a poker show for a network that's expected to launch in the next couple months.
It's called the Las Vegas Television Network.
The point is, there's a lot of growth left in the public's appetite for poker related information. He sees the Internet as a "training ground" that offers the equivalent of years of experience in a matter of months.
The results of this action are already apparent, Seif says, in the bigger poker room volumes at the brick and mortar casinos of Las Vegas and elsewhere.
"There are people winning or losing three, four or five hundred thousand and more on-line who have never been to Las Vegas," he says. "But they will be. There's a very high level of competition and a lot of money exchanging hands."
Kind of like the best is still to come, huh?
"That's right. The U. S. market is maturing. We'll continue to see growth here but at a slower rate. However, the rest of the world is just getting its appetite wet for poker."
