It’s a brand new major milestone for Poker Hall of Famer Erik Seidel, who captured his 10th career World Series of Poker gold bracelet on Saturday by taking down the $50,000 Super High Roller NLHE at the 2023 WSOP Paradise festival in the Bahamas for a first-place payday of $1,704,400.
With the victory, Seidel becomes just the fifth player in WSOP history to hit double digits when it comes to career bracelet wins. Phil Hellmuth is, of course, the All-Time bracelet leader with 17. With this win, Seidel’s made it a four-way tie in second place with 10, along with the late Doyle Brunson, Johnny Chan, and Phil Ivey. The victory comes more than 30 years after Seidel won his first bracelet in 1992 – a win in a $2,500 Limit Hold’em event for which he won $168,000.
Some might say the 10th bracelet was the toughest. Seidel is used to playing against the best in the world after spending many years playing high roller tournaments, but after fading the majority of the 137-entry field, he had to contend with a final table packed with a who’s who of nosebleed crushers. On the way to bracelet No. 10, Seidel had to outlast the likes of Timothy Adams, Adrian Mateos, Alex Foxen, and Jason Koon.
In the end, Seidel bested Seth Gottlieb in heads-up play to lock up his seventh seven-figure payday, and the fourth-highest cash of his career. Gottlieb, for his efforts, also walked with a million-dollar score – a career-high cash of $1,052,800.
It’s been more than two years in between bracelets for Seidel, who took home his ninth in September of 2021, playing the WSOP International Online $10,000 Super Million$ High Roller which brought him a score of more than $977,000.
The first-place prize pushes Seidel up over $45.5 million in total career cashes, a total that should lift him from the ninth spot on Hendon Mob’s All-Time Money List to seventh, passing both David Peters ($43,799,422) and Isaac Haxton ($45,361,014) but leaving him millions shy of Dan Smith, who currently sits in sixth with more than $49.6 million on his resume.