Poker News

Erik Seidel wins Record-breaking Aussie Millions Tournament

We’re only one month into 2011 and Erik Seidel has made more money than most poker players make in a lifetime. Seidel started the year by placing 3rd in a 6-max $5,000 Limit Hold’em tourney at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, which was good for a $46,560 cash. Just three days later, he finished 4th in the $25,000 NL Hold’em PCA High Roller Event; this earned Seidel $295,960.

Less than two weeks after that, Seidel was in Melbourne for the Aussie Millions, where he finished third in the $100,000 High Roller tourney and cashed for $618,139. However, Seidel saved his best performance for last after winning a record-breaking tournament that was put together at the last minute.

Dubbed the $250,000 Super High Roller Event, this tournament’s buy-in easily breaks the record for the most expensive tournament in history. And Seidel was one of the elite players who took part in this event, which also included Phil Ivey, Dan “jungleman12” Cates, Tom Dwan, Annette Obrestad, David Benyamine and John Juanda.

During final table play, it looked like Sam Trickett would steamroll the field after he eliminated five players. This put Trickett at a 4-to-1 chip advantage over Seidel when heads-up play began. However, Seidel was unphased by the chip advantage as he played well enough to overtake the lead from Trickett. Eventually, Trickett went all-in with AQ only to watch the board give him no help, which gave Seidel the win with a pair of 9’s.

With the win, Seidel earned an AUD $2.5 million prize ($2.47 million USD), which gives him over $3,334,000 in 2011 already! More importantly, Seidel moved into 3rd place ahead of Jamie Gold on the all-time live tournament winnings leaderboard with $13,788,227. You can often find Seidel on the tables at Full Tilt Poker, which offers some of the world’s biggest cash games and tournaments. If you’d like to join Seidel, you should sign up and use bonus code “CBONUS” to get the 100% deposit bonus up to $600.

Here are the three players who finished in the money in the $250k Super High Roller Event:

1. Erik Seidel - AUD $2.5 million
2. Sam Trickett - AUD $1.4 million
3. David Benyamine - AUD $1.1 million

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