25 Days of SHRBowl: All-Time Legends

The countdown to the year’s biggest event has begun and over the next 25 days, Poker Central will introduce the entire 2017 Super High Roller Bowl field. From the world’s best high-stakes players, to online crushers and successful businessmen, poker’s most exclusive event has it all. Follow Poker Central’s “25 Days of SHRBowl” to know who will be competing when cards get in the air on May 28th.

One of the most interesting poker rivalries over the last few years has been between Daniel Negreanu and Erik Seidel. The two veteran professionals are separated by a thin $1,000,000 margin at the top of poker’s all-time money list and heading into the summer, one big score one way or the other could shake the top of that list. The Super High Roller Bowl is the first chance for both to pick up one of those big scores but before we look ahead to the $300,000 buy-in event, how did these two legends get to the top?

To get to the beginning of Daniel Negreanu’s career, go back nearly two decades to when Negreanu won his first WSOP bracelet in 1998. The win in a $2,000 Pot Limit Hold’em event made Negreanu the youngest player ever to win a WSOP bracelet and while it may have seemed like a career-defining result at the time, Negreanu’s entire career has been filled with those kinds of moments.

Negreanu is a six-time WSOP bracelet winner and is the only player to win World Series of Poker Player of the Year honors twice, a feat he accomplished in 2004 and 2013. He is also a two-time World Poker Tour champion and is one of just two players that have ever won both WSOP and WPT Player of the Year titles. Negreanu earned that honor in Season III, after winning the 2004 WPT Borgata Poker Open and the WPT World Championship in the same year.

On top of those Player of the Year honors and major tournament titles, Kid Poker has also racked up scores and results in some of the world’s biggest events to push his career earnings over $33 million, good for the top spot on the all-time money list. His best career result, an $8,288,000 score, came from runner-up finish in the 2014 $1,000,000 buy-in The Big One for One Drop.

The Big One was another close call for Kid Poker but it came after he made even more WSOP history in 2013. Negreanu won the $10,000 WSOP APAC Main Event for $1,087,000 in April of that year, before winning the €25,000 High Roller at WSOP Europe in October. Those two victories made Negreanu the only player that has ever won WSOP events on three continents and his international resume doesn’t stop there.

Negreanu has huge results in High Roller events from around the world, in events ranging from €10,000 to $100,000 and the same can be said about Erik Seidel. Over the last few years, the New Yorker has been one of the most consistent High Rollers around the world, with his own huge results pushing his career earnings over $32 million.

Seidel, pictured above, is one of two players that have ever recorded individual cashes worth more than $2 million three times, the other being Fedor Holz, with two of those such results coming in massive High Roller wins. Seidel won the Aussie Millions $250,000 Challenge in 2011, for a career-best $2,472,000 result, and then won the EPT11 Grand Final €100,000 Super High Roller in 2015, for $2,222,000.

On top of those international victories, Seidel has also crushed in the United States. Seidel won his first of eight WSOP bracelets in 1992 and then added a World Poker Tour title in 2008. Seidel also won the 2011 NBC National Heads-Up Championship and is the only player to have ever cashed the Super High Roller Bowl twice.

Seidel final tabled the $500,000 buy-in event in 2015, finishing 7^th for a $860,000 score, and then notched a podium finish in 2016. Seidel earned $2,400,000 for his 3^rd place result in last year’s $300,000 event and while he hasn’t been able to add Super High Roller Bowl Champion to his resume, those runs have confirmed he is one of the best High Rollers in the game.

Poker had yet to boom when Daniel Negreanu and Erik Seidel won their first World Series of Poker bracelets and maybe even more impressive than their combined over $60 million in tournament earnings since, is their staying power. They’ve been at the top of the game for the better part of the last two decades and now, it is just a race to see who finishes their career on top of the all-time money list.

Tomorrow, “25 Days of SHRBowl” continues with the silver medalists from the past two years. Follow Poker Central’s coverage of the year’s biggest event here and get in the game with PokerGO.