Huck Seed lost heads-up in the $1,500 Stud Hi/Lo bracelet event last night. He now has 11 WSOP cashes this year, despite not playing poker for nearly a decade.
– I typically just want to take you back to your adolescent years, or whenever you first got into gambling or poker—or wherever you want to start. Flipping quarters with your buddies, I don’t know.
– For me, it was more of a conscious choice to get into poker. I hated the world. I didn’t like capitalism. I didn’t really want to participate. You know, I guess the corporate world has improved over the last 40 or 50 years, but... I don’t know if you’ve ever seen movies like Office Space—I definitely didn’t want to get my soul crushed in some little cubicle.
And, you know, when I was young, I was a very ethical person. I really liked the egalitarian nature of poker. Anyone can go in. Doesn’t matter if you’re tall, short, Black, white, male, female—if you’ve got the money to buy into the table, you come in, you put your name on the list, they call your seat, and you go. It’s just fair for everybody.
Part of the reason I got out of poker later was that things changed. Poker got so big, a lot of politics got involved. And then when it went to all the private home games and the politics that came with that, I was like, “Oh, this is not what I got into in the beginning.”
– So you didn’t do any kind of games or gambling growing up?
– I mean, that was my conscious choice—to get into poker. But a big moment for me was when I was in college. I had already kind of given up on my basketball dream. I had wanted to be a pro basketball player, but I was better at math and science, so I went to Caltech. I said, “I’ll just play basketball for fun.” But I still needed that competitive outlet.
So I kept playing sports for fun. And then I remember one time in our college home game, I played a long session and I got that same feeling—that competitive outlet I got from basketball and track and football and other sports. And it was a great feeling. I was like, “Wow, I can just sit here quietly, compete at poker, and get that same outlet. This is great.”
– So you went to Caltech. I think I read somewhere you studied engineering? Electrical?
– I mean, I dropped out in my second year. I was playing a lot of poker and said, “Let me just see where this poker goes. I’ll just play, and if it doesn’t work out, I’ll go back to school the next year.”
Well, my dad... another part of the story is that my dad was a poker player. So when I was young, my mom would complain, “You never spend any time with your son.” He was—when I was really young—playing in the Key Club in Oakland. He was a shill there and always at the casino, never home.
So she would complain, “You’re never here. You never spend time with your son.” So he started bringing his pro poker friends home on the weekends. And my mom would dress me up in this little tuxedo with candy cigarettes. And it was like, “Poker night!”
So in my subconscious brain later, it was like, “Oh, poker—that’s how you get attention from your dad.” It was this very social, formative experience. It became our weekend activity when I was like five or six years old—for a short period, anyway.
– Let’s get a little bit back to your first foray into actual poker.
I played a little bit with my dad’s poker pro friends when I was five or six, maybe ten times. Then I played for a month with my uncle, but it was mostly Scrabble and backgammon. There was a little poker in there, but it was just strategy and competition. It was games. Good stuff.
And then, when I was at Caltech, we had a home poker game. That’s when I got that connection—like, oh, I can compete at this. So I was trying to get better and beat people up in the game.
Then one day, the best player in the game, my friend Konstantin Othmer—he was a senior and I was a freshman—he and a couple of his buddies had been going to the casinos here and there. You know, it was L.A., so there was the Bicycle Club and the Commerce.
We went to the El Dorado, which is now the Hustler. He drove a couple of us freshmen there. He was like, “Okay, we’re going to play one-to-four seven card stud.” Eventually, he wrote a book. The next summer, he did all this computer simulation on stud and wrote a book called Seven Card Stud.
I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it, but it’s actually pretty good. Back then, he’d come up with an idea for a simulation, run it for a couple of days—it would take forever because the computer was so slow—and by the end of the summer, he had all this data to write the book.
– So why did they bring you along as a freshman? Was it 18 and over?
– No, we had our little home game, and we just took the whole home game to the casino one day. It was like five or six of us.
– Wasn’t it 21 and over?
– Yeah, I think we had... did we have a fake ID? No. No, we just sort of walked in. I couldn’t even tell you how we got in. We snuck in with hats or whatever. We were just kids. The seniors were 21, and we were like 18 or 19. They just assumed, based on proximity, that we were fine. Once they realized you weren’t going to rob the place, they were like, “All right, just let them play. F*** it.”
When I dropped out, I was 20 and I was playing all over L.A., but the place I ended up playing the most was the Normandy Casino in Gardena. Mostly because the security guards there were just lazy. I never got carded there. Before, I’d go to the Bicycle and they’d card me, or the Commerce. The Bike and the Commerce would card you, back then, maybe 15 to 20 percent of the time.
– All right. So you built up your bankroll and never looked back, I guess?
– Yeah. The other two freshmen who were my poker buddies in the home game—they dropped out shortly after I did. They followed my lead. They were pro poker players for a bit. They both ended up going back to school and finishing. But I didn’t.
I wanted to tell the story of that first time I ever went to the El Dorado—which is now the Hustler. We went there, and they were teaching us. We’d played all these crazy home games—pass the trash, all kinds of stuff. We had played a little bit of stud, but Konstantin was like, “Okay, it’s one-to-four stud, dollar low card, no ante. Just wait for aces and kings, make it four, bet all the way, and you’ll beat the game.”
So that was our base strategy. That’s all me and the other two freshmen did. We just played like that. I bought in for $20. I won $60, my friend won $180, the other guy won $150, and Konstantin won like $200—because he was a little better.
The other guy—he had this big act. He had the fake beer, the hat, and he acted drunk. He had this whole routine. Whenever he had an ace up, he’d look at his card, and if he had aces, he’d say, “I’m not going to look.” He had a way to angle his cards so he could peek, and he’d just say, “I’m raising all the way. I’m not even looking at my hand.”
He’d have aces, and everyone would cap it with him. He won like five or six hundred. He was the big winner. But he was a senior—he’d had a couple years to develop this whole act.
– Was stud your main game?
– Well, I guess before I came around, there was a lot of No Limit Holdem, but then everybody went broke. The poker community was pretty small—there just wasn’t all that money flying into it. So limit games evolved, because people could survive for months. Or someone might get on a rush for six months, even if it was bad play, and it just kept the games going.
And then, you know, in California, there was lowball—dealer’s choice lowball. I came in just at the end, after the “deal your own” era, when there was a lot of cheating going on. And then, once... I think I got into poker soon after Holdem was legalized. So there was Holdem, but around the country, I think the most popular game was Seven Card Stud. Ace-to-five lowball, limit Holdem, and Seven Card Stud were the popular games back then. And there was a little bit of No Limit Holdem or PLO, but it was very fringe. There were a few little games here and there. And No Limit Holdem, at that point, was just for the big tournaments.
– So that kind of leads me into my next question—and I might be skipping ahead too many years here, I don’t want to skip over too many stories—but how did you start dabbling in tournaments?
– Well, my original poker goals were to make a million dollars and win the world championship. Those were my two original poker goals once I dropped out of school. I dropped out when I was 20. By the time I was 21, I had the million. I took a few months off, and I was like, “Should I go for this other thing? Should I stay in poker or just do something else?” I had the money to kind of do whatever I wanted.
– Can we talk about that? Because I’m still stuck on the ten thousand to a million in a year thing. Was that... maybe a year and a half? What games were you playing?
– I took it very slow. I was actually very careful with my bankroll and everything. So I started out—I had just turned 20—and I had $10,000. I played $15/$30 limit Holdem. I played for three months and made like $15,000 a month or something. So I had like a $50,000–$60,000 bankroll. Then I went to the World Series. I was only 20, so I couldn’t play the bracelet events, but I played satellites, got the lamers, sold the chips—just hustling around.
But my goal was to win the Main Event. I thought, “Okay, I should play a tournament just for the experience, so next year when I’m 21, I’ll have that extra edge. Just dust the money, no chance to get it back.” So I did that.
I was a limit Holdem player, so I jumped in a $1,000 limit Holdem tournament. I got to the bubble, and then I basically threw my chips away. When I got there, I wasn’t sure what to do—I was like, “Should I really try to win, or am I going to get in trouble?” And I just decided to dump it.
– You are famous for your numerous bets. What is your favorite?
– I used to make fun of golf, you know. I was like, "Why are you guys watching this?" We were in the big game in Vegas with Chip and Doyle and all of them, and I said, "Why are you watching this? This isn’t even a sport." I was talking trash and they were like, "You don’t know how hard golf is. Golf is a real game." Blah blah blah. Then they bet me I couldn’t break 90 in a year. For $100,000.
I won the bet. But it was a genius bet by them because it distracted me from beating them in the poker game.
– You had another golf one too, right? Wasn’t it breaking 100 four times in one day with three clubs?
– Yeah, that was with David Grey. I had to do it at the Jack Nicklaus course in Lake Las Vegas—Reflection Bay. There are like quarter-mile, even third-of-a-mile walks between holes. It was the middle of summer too—going to be like 115 degrees. And the bet was, I had to complete four rounds under 100, using just a five iron, sand wedge, and putter. And I had to walk. So it was mostly about surviving the heat. But also, the course itself was tough. There was a hole that was like a 210-yard carry from the back tees with a five iron. Pretty hard.
– How does a bet like that even come up? Are you just sitting around talking, and one thing leads to another?
– Mentally, I became a golf gambler because of Chip and Doyle. They made me that bet, and I decided to try to win it. I got a golf coach and practiced every day, all day, for like eight months. Got my score down to 79 or so. After I won the bet, I was hooked. I got into golf gambling along the way.
– Were you a winner overall in golf gambling?
–I was just thinking about that on the way over. I honestly don’t know if I’m ahead or behind overall. I lost a very big bet once—it was me and Howard Lederer against Doyle and Mike Sexton. A two-on-two scramble.
– How much did you bet?
– I only bet $50,000. It was a $50,000 Nassau, so I ended up losing $100,000 on it. It was one of those bets with a huge entourage. Doyle had something like a million-dollar Nassau going. He won two or three million on it. Everyone was betting on us, because Doyle could barely walk. And they were scrambling from the ladies' tees, while we were scrambling from the back tees. And it was still an even match.
– I want to know your favorite prop bet, but I also want to touch on the one where you had to be in the ocean for 24 hours without touching the beach.
– At the time, I was hanging out a lot with Phil Hellmuth. He's a swimmer, and we had all kinds of swimming bets and other prop bets. I had read this article about a boat wreck, where people were floating around and dog-paddling for three or four days until they got rescued. So I thought, of course I can float for 24 hours. These people did it for days to survive—why couldn’t I do it for a bet? I never actually tried it. We bet $10,000, and it was supposed to happen three months later. But I kept winning every day and the games were too good, so I just said, "Forget it." I tried to postpone or settle it, but Phil was smart. He wouldn’t settle. So I just paid off the bet.
I recently had a similar bet with Matt Valeo ( Ed. – PhenomPoker regular, also playing in the World Series now ). Matt was the number two runner in Arizona in high school. He ran a 4:19 mile. A really good runner. I just run to stay in shape—not a bad runner, but never elite. So he’s only 40, I’m 56. You’d think he’d have to spot me a lot, but I made the bet because I figured he wouldn't really train hard. He had four months to run one mile at his old pace. After that, I had four more months and four attempts to run a half marathon at that exact pace. Thirteen miles at 4:19-per-mile pace.
He got stuck in Germany trying to fly to Dubai. His daughter’s passport had only five months left, and they wouldn’t let her on the plane because you need six months of validity. So he had to cancel the trip. Then he ran once, did a three-day fast, dropped 10 pounds, and I started sweating. He texted me saying, “It’s not too late to call it off,” and I did.
– Talk about the Main Event run and the state of poker at the time. I believe it was 1996.
– Yeah. So I had two goals: make a million dollars, which I did pretty quick — maybe in two days or twenty hours, I don’t even know. Well, maybe a couple of years or a year and a half. But the second goal was to win the WSOP Main Event. I accomplished that pretty quickly too.
I might have won it even earlier, because I’d always have all the chips and be the chip leader. Then with two or three tables left, I’d blow up. But the year I won, I had just moved to Vegas. That home court advantage really matters. I had no girlfriend, I was living out of a hotel room, and I would just burn myself out. I was playing all the big cash games, not really focusing on tournaments. So by the time the Main Event came around, I was a bit burned out — even if I was hyped up.
That year, though, I had a girlfriend. I was working out, eating better, more balanced overall. I was friends with Gus Hansen too. He stayed with me during the series, and I was teaching him poker. He came to sweat me during the tournament, and I gave him a little piece of me. I ended up winning it.
– How many days was the Main Event in ’96?
– Three days. There were 395 players. Doyle had bet on me to win. And back then, when someone was all in, Jack McClelland would announce it over the mic. So Doyle never heard my name once. He figured I must still be chip leader and decided I was going to win.
– And payouts were really different back then.
– Yeah. Very top-heavy.
I even remember some events with 50 percent to first. I saw one of your old tournaments — prize pool was around $75,000, and first place got $40,000. Second got like $13,000. Huge gaps.
– Did you make a deal?
– No. I was already playing in the biggest cash games in the world. Not that a million dollars doesn’t matter, but at that point it wasn’t going to change my life dramatically.
I think I did make some kind of a deal. I can't remember now. Well, it was funny because it was the only year that I gave up a pretty good piece of myself in the tournament. I always just played on my own, and then that was the year I gave half to David Gray and Howard Lederer. So I only had half of myself the year I won. And then, because they wanted to make some kind of deal, we did at some point.
– I know you’ve been taking some time off poker recently. I know you’re getting back into it now. Do you envision yourself playing the Main Event ever again?
– Well, I have to play this year to get the Phenom patch and win for Phenom. We haven’t really talked much about Phenom, but that’s the whole reason I got back into poker.
First, I was kind of like... I had done everything. I’d won all the different tournaments and events and cash games and learned all the different games. I felt like I’d done everything there was to experience in poker. Nothing left to do. Nothing left to prove.
What kept me going, when I was already kind of done with poker, was online poker. That was really fun. It was a different version of the game. I got good at playing six or eight games at once. All the multitabling—that was fun.
But then once all that crashed and burned with Full Tilt and everything... I tried to keep playing poker, but with all the politics around home games, that was kind of the last straw for me. I quit.
It was a combination of the rake going up, the tournaments getting worse, too much politics. People stealing the live ones, the nonsense about home games, cheating in the home games, people not getting paid. I just didn’t like the poker world anymore. And I had already played enough and done everything. So I was out.
I kind of quit. Then every year I’d come play two or three events at the World Series at the Rio. It was freezing cold in there. Just wasn’t a great experience. I tried to keep coming back, but nothing ever got me really excited again.
Until by some random chance, I made this running bet with Matt. That led me to get to know him a bit. I tried the site, and I just loved it.
I thought about the idea of a community-owned site. The crypto. The vision to solve all the problems—cheating, real-time assistance, all of it. I really liked his vision for the site. It just felt good to be a part of it.
And it finally got me back into poker. This was about three months ago.
