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Backgammon Articles
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From Backgammon to Poker through Wall Street
Erik Seidel is one of the highest earning poker players, former World Poker Tour champion and holder of 8 WSOP (World Series of Poker) bracelets. Like many other poker pros, Seidel arrived to poker from backgammon, a game he played professionally for about eight years. Unlike his backgammon/poker colleagues, Erik took a break from gaming life to earn a living as a stock trader on Wall Street, until the 1987 stock market crash clarified his true destiny.
New York native Erik Seidel (aka "Sly") was born in 1959. He started playing backgammon when he was only 12 and got so hooked into the game that he dropped out of high school to concentrate on this new pursuit. Seidel became a member of the legendary Mayfair Club in New York, originally a backgammon and bridge club famed for his later high stake poker games.
The Mayfair Club was responsible for converting many backgammon pros into poker and for launching the poker career of then a renowned gin rummy champion named Stu Unger. However, it was not until Sly resided in Las Vegas, as part of his national backgammon tour, that he begun playing poker seriously. Yet before he made poker into his major source of wealthy income, Seidel took an interest in a different kind of game, and entered the world of stock trading.
The stock market crash of 1987 left him without a job and apparently with no place to live. The shortest, fastest way to restore his former standards of living was the poker way. In 1988, he played his first WSOP event and made it to the final table, heads up with Johnny Chan. Though he lost to Chan, he earned $280,000 in one of the most amazing achievements in a first time tournament play.
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