Seidel Supercedes Ivey On All-Time Winnings List

For years it’s seemed like the lifetime poker earnings leaderboard was just a two-man race as Phil Ivey and Daniel Negreanu jockeyed back and forth at the top. A key win for recent Hall of Famer Erik Seidel did the unthinkable – it put him in the second place position, knocking Ivey down to third for the first time in ages. The win in question was a whopper, to be sure. In fact, it was the largest live tournament buy-in event in history with a jaw-dropping $250,000 entry fee.

We’ve already reported on Seidel’s stunning back to back Aussie Millions wins. Playing down under put the revered pro way up. His third place finish in the regular $100,000 Challenge netted him $625,000 but that was pocket change compared to the nearly $2.5 million payout he earned for winning the first $250,000 Super High Roller. As if that wasn’t enough, Seidel’s been having another awesome week out in Los Angeles where the popular L.A. Poker Classic has been underway for over a month.

While Negreanu has been traveling the world these last few months in a desperate bid to increase his lead, Seidel has quietly been creeping up, and his win at the WPT L.A. Poker Classic’s High Roller event put him within $80,000 of the current lifetime earnings record. That’s right; Seidel won yet another high roller. This time the $25,000 buy-in event earned him a considerably more modest $144,570 check, but that win was enough to have him breathing down Negreanu’s neck on the leaderboard.

There’s more good news for Seidel, too. The L.A. Poker Classic will continue on at the Commerce Casino until March 3, giving him more opportunities to cash. While it’s unlikely that Seidel, who almost exclusively favors the high roller events, will return to play in a lesser event, it’s not impossible. That is to say, there is a slim chance that Seidel could top the lifetime earnings leaderboard this very week. If nothing else, the man’s earned more than $3.6 million in just the first two months of 2018; if his momentum continues then Negreanu’s really going to have to step things up.

In related news, the L.A. Poker Classic Main Event has closed on Day 4 with only 18 players remaining. The final table will be determined tomorrow in what will no doubt be a shorter than usual Day 5. Day 3’s rapid eliminations meant the bubble had been reached early on, so everyone returning today was guaranteed a decent return on their $10,000 buy-in. Leading the way going into Day 5 was Vivek Rajkumar, whose 3,231,000 chips put him nearly one 1 million ahead of the next largest stack.

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