It was interesting to be playing with such a variety of players and trying to figure all of them out, what they were doing, whether they were aggressive.” Three-betting on a bluff was very unusual. “People who were three-betting had a big hand. “It was easier to put people on a hand back then - it was a very different time.' Three-betting was a particular area he felt like he could exploit. I remember finding a lot of spots where bluffing was effective.” “The first few days it was interesting to see that I was doing some things that other people weren’t doing. Right from the start, he found his game was working out well. Seidel was in, one of 167 entrants to the 1988 Main Event. People could just take a straight piece.” Aggression Pays Off “It would have been crazy to pay $10,000 on my own and I had about 30% of myself. How much did Seidel have of his own action in his breakthrough tournament? Maybe not as much as you might have presumed. It was nice that there were a few people who had confidence - they were all players from New York.” “All the people that were betting on me were taking a big chance. “I played nine satellites and I lost all of them.” A former Amex option trader, Seidel stuck to New York buyers. Selling action was already a big part of entering tournaments such as the World Series Main Event, and Las Vegas was abuzz with players trading pieces of each other. So I ended up taking a bunch of partners to play in the tournament.” “I played nine satellites and I lost all of them,” says Seidel. But what events led up to that second-place finish that would etch him in poker history? You can find out how the lifelong New Yorker came to be in Vegas for the WSOP in our Before the Game article series. But what was the iconic poker moment like for Seidel, the man who lost the 1988 WSOP Main Event but who would one day surpass “Johnny Chan, the Master” and become one of the greatest if not the greatest of players to exist in multiple eras of no limit hold’em? And how did it come to be? Getting In In the scene, Chan famously looks up to the ceiling of the Binion’s Horseshoe and to the commentator’s hushed tones, his ‘Eye to the Sky’ moment precipitates the final all-in and call of the tournament.Ĭhan got the better of Seidel to win back-to-back World Series Main Events. Damon’s character, Mike McDermott, is watching old footage of Johnny Chan and Erik Seidel in the 1988 WSOP Main Event. Mention the World Series of Poker to any movie fan, and they’ll think of the moment in Rounders, the 1998 film starring Matt Damon and Ed Norton.

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