Seth Berger

Birthplace
Brooklyn, NY

Hometown
Malvern, PA

Total Winnings
$175,439

There was a pretty good chance Seth Berger would never play in a World Poker Tour event. After all, his grandfather had played poker his entire life and ended up broke. Although Berger liked the game and had been playing it since he was eleven years old, he had no illusions about making it a career. Never all that good at math or any of its related disciplines, Berger set out on a different path early in life. He started a t-shirt company that turned into a shoe company that turned into a TV production company. By the time Berger was in his thirties, his company had grown big enough to draw the attention of people with money. Those people with money decided to pay Berger enough cash for his company that he would never have to work again. The next thing the thirty-something New Yorker-turned-Philadelphian knew, he was retired before the age of forty. Retirement treated the one-time entrepreneur well. It allowed him to play basketball and coach it part-time at a nearby school. It freed him up to spend time with his family. What's more, it gave him time to read a little bit more. When a friend gave him Jim McManus' "Positively Fifth Street," Berger re-discovered his love for poker. The older he got, the less competitive he was on the basketball court. The poker felt was a place where he could work out his competitive juices. Before long, he was playing in high stakes cash games around his hometown. Shrouded in poker anonymity, Berger made some small cashes in World Series and side WPT events. It wasn't until he won a satellite for the Foxwoods Poker Classic in 2007 that Berger's face ended up in front of the world. Berger made his first major final table and did it on one of poker's biggest stages. While he continues to play the game, he has no dreams about making it a full-time pursuit, choosing instead to dedicate that time to his family.