Matt Berkey: Scott, you had one hell of a summer By the way, thank you for coming in.
Scott Seiver: Of course, happy to.
– I had no idea that you lowkey watched until I sat at your table this summer, and as I was congratulating you on your third bracelet, you snapped back and said, "Not quite as good as Rast though."
Yeah, I mean, it's just a chip on the shoulder you need to try and get through these things.
I'm happy to have been partial fueling of the fire. You know, sometimes you just have to create your own fuel to get yourself to actually do stuff.
So going back to the actual Fantasy Draft, you went for like 31 bucks, I think. Is that right?
Something like 37. I have no idea.
– You and Rast were priced the same, and when we were discussing it, I was like, "Well, the thing with Seiver is you never know how much volume he's going to put in." When did you make the decision that this was the year you were going to just f*** off in cash and go hardcore into the World Series?
Probably about like two weeks before the series started, something like that. Like a week and a half before. A couple of people were texting me for Fantasy stuff, like if I was going to play, and I told several people, 'Probably, I'm not sure.' Because you know, everything I say can just change based on what happens, but my gut is I'm going to play like some World Series events.
– ...And then just out of the blue, you were like, "You know what, I'm going to play them all."
So I went to the draft to hang out near the end just because I'm friends with a bunch of people there. I was there drinking with Toby Lewis and just hanging out, shooting the breeze. And I saw I went for what I thought was an egregious number. I then said to the room, "Hey, does anyone want to bet literally anyone that's been drafted other than Shaun Deeb versus me for any amount?" And everyone said, "No, no, like you're too scary. That means you're motivated. We don't want to." I'm like, "Okay, fair play, that's cool."
The moment the 25k draft ended, they ran a $2,500 draft as a second chance draft, and I went for $2 lower in the 2500. And I'm there, I'm just like, "No one will bet me? And you're taking me like $2 less? This is some f***ing bullshit." And then I'm like, "I'm going to win 10 bracelets in front of these guys."
– Did you get any side action down?
Yeah, yeah. I got first like head-vs-head me versus like 10 or 11 different people.
– In these events, it really does come down to the glory from an outsider's perspective.
Oh absolutely. WSOP just has like the best brand ever. You have to admit it's pretty impressive.
– Yeah, and on top of that, like a lot of these smaller events, you're winning less than you would swing in a few hours in Bobby's Room. It's not like the money doesn't matter, but it's obviously not the number one motivator.
A Break From Bobby's Room
– How much do you think you give up by not playing in Bobby's for an entire summer?
Oh, a ton. But just like at some point, you decide that you want to do something else, both for the fun, for the glory, to try it. I've made the choice of Bobby's Room like 10 or 11 straight years, where almost every year I play like 15 tournaments, but all of them are literal last-second late reg and just seeing if I can spin something up.
I've never done the "I'm going to be there hand one, I'm going to be locked in, and let's just see what happens because the cash games are always just like way too big of a draw.
– How much sanity do you think you regained by ducking Bobby's Room for an entire summer?
So much. One of the funniest things that I said was I came into Bobby's Room like halfway through the summer just to shoot the breeze with the guys playing for like 10 minutes before going to my next event. Everyone looked beyond miserable, like glaring daggers at each other.
I leave the room, I text Eric Wasserson, who was in the game. I'm like, "Is it just me, or is like everyone extra psychotic this summer?" He goes, "No dude, you just escaped for four weeks. You forgot what it was like." He was like, "It's exactly the same. It's been every day for years, man. You just forgot." That's when you knew you made the right decision.
I was just like, "Oh, this place has been sucking the soul out of me." So it was nice for that.
– Yeah, there's something very special about those hallowed walls. I mean, you guys were even in a little bit more of a VIP area this year, but it still carries forth the walls of Bobby's Room and how insane everybody has to be to get in there day in and day out."
Oh, 100%. I'm sure the vengeful spirit of like Opie and the ghosts of psychos past will just always linger in that room.
– It's a special treat for me every now and again.
When we get Johnny World in, he'll start to tell some stories, and man, they're just so great. Like some of the old Doyle stories – obviously, those two are very contentious, and had their bouts. Most of these I don't think I can repeat on air, but you know and I know and everybody on the outskirts kind of knows – it's a great time hearing these things.
That's what I'm saying. I feel like truly, at the end of the day, in your guys' No-Limit game, you're all mostly normal people compared to the real mixed-game psychos that I'm part of.
– I have to tell you, man, if you were able to put a normal human being in that environment for a few days just to observe, they would leave and certainly think that we all need help."
Oh absolutely, but that's why they would never end up there.
– Yeah, it's a very special choice to decide to gamble for high stakes for a long period of time.
Becoming Player of the Year
– Brian kind of brought up the banner. Let's talk a little about what it means to be Player of the Year for you.
Honestly, if you had asked me the day before the series started, I would have said I couldn't have cared less. It truly would have meant literal zero to me. But as I started doing better and better, I created the narrative in my own head of like, 'Oh, this could happen.' And the thing I've been telling everyone is that for me, it's not the banner that's been special or the bracelets that have been special, although it is. It's that I kind of went out on a limb, went full psycho mode, stuff I never do in interviews ever, and was just like, 'Hey guys, watch out. I'm going to win POY this year.'"
Like, after I won my first bracelet, they interviewed me on PokerNews, and they're like, 'Oh, are you happy?' I'm like, 'Nah, maybe I'll be happy if I win three, but my goal is like five, and if I don't get POY, it would be an embarrassment right now.'
It's the fact that I just really went out there saying all this stuff that had no upside at all and then followed through on it. That's been the part that's been cool for me.
– You didn't have your eye on the Player of the Year when you decided that you're going to play tournaments this summer? Were you thinking about the Player of the Year, or were you just like, "I'm just going to play and see what happens"?
Mostly just play and see what happens. I cared about bracelets way more than POY. Like, a bunch of choices early on in the series, there were various events you could do where it's easy to get a lot of POY points because they're low buy-in stuff that I skipped all of because I was trying to play the events I thought were more likely for me to win bracelets. Because I was just like, I want a bunch of hardware to show that I can do that. And then it was only after starting to be successful that I was like, 'Uh, maybe I can try and do both.'
– I think from the poker community standpoint, these are kind of the narratives that we fall for. And maybe it's not just the poker community, maybe this is just the general populace as a whole. These are the narratives that get drummed up in sports all the time – the underdog story or the "I'm going to call my shot" type of story. And obviously, especially in a very logic-driven game, it's ludicrous. It doesn't mean anything, you know. Like, you could be like Hellmuth and just make these vapid statements all the time, and when they happen be like, "See, I told you I'm the greatest."
But on the other hand, I went out before the series and got custom-printed two different shirts with Babe Ruth calling his shot and then wore them at each of my final tables that I then won.
I really did just go out there for no reason, completely psychotically, just being like, 'Here I come.'
– From my perspective, there's a ton of respect for people who are willing to do that, especially like yourself. You don't have anything to prove at this point. You're very well accomplished, and from the media's perspective, they should just be eating this up with a spoon. Same with the Landon bet and other things. This stuff is all such nonsense, and we can pick it apart forever and just be like, 'Oh well, you know, luck is going to choose the outcomes here a lot of time.' It's like, yeah, but what happens when it just writes itself?
That's the beauty of sports, I feel, And I'm not going to get into a poker sports debate because I don't care about that, but I care about narrative. I mean, you obviously as a big baseball guy and sports in general, to me, one of the most beautiful things about sports, even more so than watching great competition, is the storylines that write themselves. Because we as fans, we get enamored and tied into these stories, whether they're real or not. They become real because enough millions of things are happening that then you find the one great story.
So like, yeah, we can rationally understand that like, 'Oh, even if I tried my hardest, it was like X%, where X is low.' To me, none of that matters. What matters is cool stories. I think like me and Jeremy playing every day is just a really cool story. I think JBecks and Landon is a really cool story. And I don't know, to me, sports, or at least sports entertainment, is about the stories, no matter how quote-unquote 'real' or not they are.
– Yeah, wholeheartedly agree. I feel like this is the biggest oversight that we have in our industry, and I don't really know how to fix it necessarily. But I feel myself getting hyped for certain things, even like the Daniel versus Polk heads-up match. There was no part of me that thought that was a good idea on Daniel's behalf, and there wasn't really that big of a part of me that was interested in watching hundreds of hours of heads-up poker either. But just following along at like a cursory level where you know, you open Twitter and there's an update.
Same thing with like the Galfond Challenge and stuff.
I was going to say, specifically the Galfond-VeniVidi, which had like a gazillion people watching at the end. That's beautiful. I watched the last like 4 hours just glued to my computer screen."
– Same. Didn't feel a thing when Phil was stuck a million, didn't feel a thing when Phil was only stuck a couple hundred thousand, but man, was I locked in to see if he was going to be able to take a knee against this guy. It's just like one of the most riveting things that you could imagine.
And I think that's beautiful, and we should be leaning into that.
If anything, I feel that during this summer, it's what made me appreciate the WSOP POY race so much more than I did before ever doing this, because there are actually a few dozen people that truly care a massive amount. And the few dozen people that care are just straight up the best players that are playing the tournaments. Like, everyone really cares.
And I want to really give a shout out to Shaun Deeb, who would, in my opinion, easily be like the odds-on favorite most years for this because he's willing to multi-table, play 20 things, never tilt, never sleep, just loves this more than anyone. He's out there helping people all the time, being like, 'Oh, you should play XYZ and do this, this, that to get more points,' because he wants more people involved in caring about it to make it matter more and feel more prestigious.
Player of the Year's New Formula
– With regards to the Player of the Year, they changed the formula this year. I don't know how privy you were to the old one, but what do you think of the new formula that they're using?
Oh, I think it's amazing. It was, in fact, a big part of the reason why I grinded a bunch. Like, I didn't really care about POY, but I was just going to go and get a bracelet and then get out if it wasn't for the POY points change. I see that made it feel like, 'Oh, you can actually try and win this thing without feeling that you're lighting literally $50,000 to $100,000 of money on fire to try and win it.' In the old system, you literally have to just burn money to try and win it.
– You had to play the high rollers, right?
Well, not only that, you had to play the high rollers, but you had to blind out of a bunch of events. You would have a bunch of people literally two or three tabling stuff, getting super deep in these turbo two days, hitting their 3% bonus, and then just blinding out to play another tournament.
I would never be able to do that. Just like my competitive spirit wouldn't be able to see me with 30X starting stack in a tournament, no matter the buy-in size, and see there's like 200 people left and not be like, "I'm going to win this thing.
But you just could not have won POY with that mentality in any previous year.
– So now the scoring system takes your top 10 best scores or something like that?
Your 10 best, yeah. Plus your best online score. Well, no – 10 including online. You can only use one from online if your online is in your top 10.
– How doable do you think it is to win four bracelets in a summer? You were close.
I was very close. I mean, pretty impossible. I think it should be like... I'm going to say a very over-arrogant number for myself because I think I'm most likely to do it. It's probably like 1 in 300 for me, 1 in 400.
– So like if there's a few dozen of you out there, maybe we see it in the next 10-15 years, assuming nothing changes.
It's definitely possible. The problem is, what makes it so much exponentially harder is that every time you win one of these things, you're skipping four days worth of other events. So the mere thought of having a chance to win four means you're 16 days, not counting having to late reg the fifth day of others. It's like 18 days worth of events that you're missing everything else.
So like everyone else is playing, say, 90 events on the schedule, or in reality like 60. You're all of a sudden, if you're on a path to win four, you're minus 25 events. You have to win the one-day turbo. It has to be included in it basically.
You have to either win the one-day turbo or just win like 20% of the events you're playing.
– Which is ridiculous. I guess we can put it that way. That's pretty insane.
It exponentiates way more unlikely for each bracelet because of the opportunity cost of missing all these other events.
– What were your thoughts with regard to the online event that played out live?
I think it's a really, really good concept. The only reason it's a really good concept is because, in my opinion, all this online event stuff is complete bullshit. So it's at least better than solely online. It's great for that, but I don't know, I'm just kind of categorically against it for 20 different reasons.
Inspiring Future Generations
– How do you feel about the next generation seeing Scott Seiver and Brian Rast of the world and wanting to compete against them?
I'll be honest, I don't think that's happening. If it did, I would think it's extremely cool. I think ESPN's original coverage back then and the lack of strength of the internet back then gave an aura to these people that isn't going to be repeated.
It doesn't matter what I'm ever going to do in life, I'm not going to have the mystique that Doyle Brunson had sitting at a table.
– They were inaccessible.
Correct, and there's something beautiful about that.
There's the mythos that got created on Two Plus Two where, you know, Phil Ivey – there's a photo of him with a bunch of money on the ground by his feet, and then there's like 30 pages of almost fanfiction trying to imagine what would happen. He never speaks in an interview, so people create the stuff. Or there was a similar thing with a photo of him eating gummy worms at a tournament once, and people are just like, "Wow, this guy is so mysterious."
That stuff would never happen anymore. You can't see Brian Rast eating a sandwich and be like, "Wow, this guy's on another level." It's just different now, and that's okay, but I don't think it's going to be the same in that level of awe.
– I agree with you. We've spoken a lot about this, but the main thing that I seem to keep circling back to is that torch was kind of never passed. It's not on them, it's just the mechanics that built that group up to be what they were – the lore, the opportunities.
I mean, even things like The Corporation versus Andy Beal. Imagine something like that happening now. If it did, either you would never hear about it, or it would be in the framework of Dan Bilzerian and Rick Salomon playing Andy Beal or some other rich billionaire.
That was actually one of my biggest regrets of my entire poker career. The second time Andy Beal came, Doyle called me. I basically didn't know him at all. I played in his game a decent bit, but we weren't friendly at the time really because I was still hopping back and forth. He must have asked someone for my number because I definitely didn't have his number at the time. He called me and was like, "Scott, are you in Vegas? Andy Beal's coming here tomorrow. There's no one really around right now. Do you want to play him?"
I was in Australia for the January Aussie tournament, the Aussie Millions, and I was like, "No." He's like, "Can you get here in like 12 hours?" I was like, "Literally no, planes don't go that fast."
– Did you at least consider it though?
I absolutely did. I started looking at flights and trying to see what I could do, like could I be there in 16 hours. And then he just had Todd play him instead, and Todd beat him for like five million or whatever. I was like, "Don't worry Scott, it all worked out." I was like, "Yeah, cool, thanks." I remember asking if I could have a piece if I couldn't play, and he goes, "Of course not. You can have any amount if you do." I'm like, "Okay, great."
Hall of Fame Chances
– Do you think you would be a first-ballot Hall of Fame, and do you care?
I do care. I don't really know why I care, but I do, and I think I will be. I kind of think I should be. I think there's a very limited number of people that actually know who should and shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame. It's a very fun thing to discuss in public, but in reality, there's only about 30 people who truly know. A lot of those people are currently in the hall, but I think it is really weighted towards the cash game I play, for a lot of reasons, but for reasons that I think are genuinely good reasons. Because a lot of the people in my game are the best players in the world at a bunch of different games and have also done it in a bunch of different scenes.
Looking at my own career, obviously, I'm garbage compared to the best players now, but for my time, I was almost certainly the best or the second-best heads-up no-limit player there was. Then switched to mixed games and online I was easily the biggest winner in online mixed games. Then switched to playing live and moved from lowest stakes up to Bobby's Room, and I've been there for like 13 years where dozens and dozens of people have washed out that were great players but just not great enough. Also, I have seven bracelets now and a gazillion dollars in a bunch of other tournaments.
I don't know, I've just kind of thrown my hat in every ring and done well at it because that's been my goal in life since I was like 12 years old. I had always told myself my dream was I want to be the best in the world at something, and I've always cared about the competitive drive more than money, more than respect, more than anything else. I just wanted to be the best, and I've just kind of tried that in every facet of poker.
– I think you and Nick Shulman both turning 40 at the same time is where the problems begin.
The problem has begun for a while because it's insane that Isai isn't in. That's the one that's really like, "What are we doing?" But that said, I would have always chosen Antonius over him as well this year, etc, and Rast the year before.
I think ideally, in a perfect world, there should be like 40 people that vote on it, 40 people handpicked by me where I know the correct 40, and anyone that gets 75% plus of the vote is in. Some years that can be zero, and some years that can be six.
But you can't have that to the public because the public doesn't know. Like Ted Forrest, one of the world's best players and in his prime was the player most feared by many other people, and the public would have no idea about that probably.