Seth Davies Dominates: Two-Time SHRB Winner Reflects on Massive Run

Seth Davies had just enough time to gulp down a beer following his win in Super High Roller Bowl: $100k Pot-Limit Omaha on Saturday night. Conquering a final table that included players like Sean Winter, Jared Bleznick, Josh Arieh, Sam Soverel, and Ben Tollerne wasn’t easy. The heads-up matchup with Artem Maksimov then took a bit out of him as well.

The cold brew was well-deserved, but the celebration didn’t last long – other priorities awaited. Davies finished off the beer and rushed home to where his wife Mariana was having her 40th birthday party. The news of winning $1.5 million undoubtedly turned into a nice birthday present. The title was just the latest for Davies, who has become a dominating force in high-stakes poker and on the PGT.

Super High Roller Warrior

Winning Super High Roller Bowls is becoming a regular part of life for Davies. The poker pro, originally from Bend, Oregon, took down the $100,000 buy-in Super High Roller Bowl: Pot-Limit Omaha event last week for $1.5 million. That was preceded by winning the $300,000 buy-in Super High Roller Bowl IX in August in North Cyprus for more than $3.2 million.

Winning a Super High Roller Bowl always ranked high among the tournament wins he hoped to accomplish, and Davies now has a pair of titles. Those served as a bit of redemption for Davies after a rough earlier experience playing at that level.

“The Super High Roller Bowl ranks super high, especially for me,” he said after the first Super High Roller Bowl victory in August. “It has a special place in my heart because the first time I ever played a gigantic tournament, over $100,000, was Super Roller Bowl in Vegas. I think it was 2018, and I actually bubbled. It was the first time I experienced a very high-stakes (tournament) like this that went really bad. I had such high hopes for this tournament, and I ended up bubbling, getting nothing. So now coming full circle and actually getting to win it. It's really cool for me, personally.”

Along with Justin Bonomo and Timothy Adams, Davies is now the third person to win two Super High Roller Bowls in the same year. With titles in both No-Limit Hold’em and Pot-Limit Omaha, Davies has trouble picking which one means more to him.

“They're hard to compare,” he told PGT after this week’s win. “It's kind of apples to oranges. I think the PLO is really cool because there are so many guys from a different world kind of coming here. There are so many players who are like cash game pros, from Europe especially. So it's cool to have those guys come in here. It's like a much different world. I couldn't say one's better than the other. I think the no limit means a little more to me because I've been a no-limit pro for longer, and I was really hunting a big win like that.”

Also in August, Davies finished runner-up in the €100,000 EPT Super High Roller for €895,000, and won the PGT PLO Series $25k Pot-Limit Omaha Championship in March for $522,000. It’s been an amazing run for Davies, who now has $31.8 million in live tournament winnings, according to The Hendon Mob, in a record stretching back to 2010 and sits 23rd on the all-time money list. Moving higher on that list isn’t his main goal, but the two-time SHRB winner sees some positives in seeing his name among the game’s biggest winners.

“At the end of the day, making money is the primary objective,” he says. “But something like the all-time money list … it gives you a lot of validation for your career because nobody just stumbles into $30 million in cashes. Somebody can run hot and win like a $10 million main event or something, so it's a lot of validation to have the longevity to accumulate that much in cashes. So it means a lot to me for sure.”

The last few months have been insane. To win go on a run like this and win two different marquee super high rollers has been one hell of a career highlight. Truly something I could have only imagined when I was a new pro grinding $10 SNG's for a living. My high stakes career… pic.twitter.com/6Qce7l1a29

— Seth Davies (@Sdavies22) October 28, 2024

More PLO on the Horizon

A regular in PGT events, Davies now sits third on the PGT leaderboard with 1,855 PGT points behind Daniel Negreanu (2,054 PGT points) and Jeremy Ausmus (2,789 PGT points). He has been an occasional player in Pot-Limit Omaha events through the years, but may be considering even more now with two big Pot-Limit Omaha wins in 2024.

“No-Limit is my main girl, she's never going anywhere,” he says. “But I was just talking to Artem Maksimov about how PLO tournaments are becoming more of a pronounced part of the high-stakes schedule nowadays. You have a bunch of WSOPs, here at the Super High Roller Bowl now, as well as PGT PLO series. There's just a lot of PLO tournaments to play now. So I'm going to be around playing all these for sure.”

That may mean adding the game more to his training regimen. He has seen millions of hands in No-Limit Hold’em and has a deep understanding of the fundamentals, Davies says, but feels he needs to work more on his PLO game despite the success in Pot-Limit Omaha events on the PGT in 2024.

“I’ve got a lot of ground to cover,” he says. “Fortunately, one of the good things I have working for me is I know how tournaments work and how the values of chips are kind of fluid throughout the tournament, which is very important. Once I can kind of blend that with better PLO fundamentals, I think I'll be a pretty good weapon at these PLO tournaments.”

On a Heater & Looking Ahead

Some big series' are ahead on the poker schedule, including the PokerStars North American Poker Tour in Las Vegas beginning this week and the Triton Poker Super High Roller Series Monte Carlo in November. The World Series of Poker Paradise in the Bahamas and World Poker Tour Championship in Las Vegas also both play out in December.

With some big wins under his belt recently, how does Davies feel going into a few big months of high-stakes tournament poker?

“I couldn't ask for a better mindset to be in coming into massive stakes at Triton, at Wynn, and at Bahamas. So just having a great year underneath me already, it really just lets you kind of be free and not scared,” he says. “Confidence and momentum is absolutely a thing in poker because it's going to keep you from being tight and scared of losing, which is kind of disastrous. Being able to carry that mindset into these gigantic buy-ins is a huge, huge boost for me.”

Listen to the Full Interviews with Seth Davies on the PokerGO Podcast

Sean Chaffin is a freelance writer and editor in Ruidoso, New Mexico, and an occasional PGT and PokerGO contributor. He has covered poker for over a decade and can be found on Twitter at @PokerTraditions.

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