Huck Seed: Professional Poker Player Profile

Huck Seed is easy to spot in a room full of crowded players. His physique is not very easy to ignore, or to forget. He stands at an intimidating height of 6'7" (2.01 m), but what truly strikes fear into the hearts of his opponents is his stone-cold silence at the table. This lanky giant betrays little of what he feels about his cards, attacking instinctively and without mercy.

Huck Seed - or "Huckleberry" as he sometimes wishes to be called - is also an avid proposition gambler, taking on bets outside of card play. He once made a bet with Phil Hellmuth that he could float on any body of water. There was $10,000 at stake and he was allowed to wear a wetsuit. Seed lost. He subsequently won the money back from Hellmuth by traveling all the way to Madison, Wisconsin, where Hellmuth lived, and defeating him at 9-ball for $2,000 a game. Hellmuth lost $24,000 that night. Incidentally, Phil Hellmuth - the self-confessed "Poker Brat" - once said he considers Huck Seed to be one of the best players in the game.

Seed's impulsive nature has made him come across as careless to other poker enthusiasts, though it has also brought him some remarkable victories. He won the 1996 World Series of Poker (WSOP) main event, and its $1 million prize. He made the final table of the 1999 WSOP, but finished 6th. As of 2004 he had a total of four WSOP bracelets. As of 2005, his live tournament winnings exceed $2,365,000.

In his match with Johnny Chan at the 2002 WSOP, Seed dealt "the hand that will be talked about for years." Chan had bet $20,000 on the Q 3 2 flop, holding a Q 10 of diamonds. Seed threw all his chips into the pot, though he only had a 4 5 hand. In the end, Chan had almost half the chips on the table. In spite of this great loss, Seed finished 10th in the event.

Huck Seed was a former engineering student at CalTech. He took a leave of absence in 1989, started playing poker, and never went back to college. It is said that he is a native of Montana. Little else is known about him. He has not been active in the poker circuit for some time, and his admirers are starting to wonder when he will be making another appearance.