Pro-File: Huck Seed
There are so many things one needs to do or have go the right way in order to live up to one’s potential as a poker player. Skill, luck, focus, attitude, empathy, health, tactics… these things are all essential to success in their own way and the nature of the game stacks them like dominos, with a failing in one knocking down the others.
Huck Seed, he of the 1996 World Series of Poker championship, he of the 12-4 record at NBC's National Heads-Up Poker Championship, he of the prop bets and the biggest cash games in the world, has learned this the hard way. Seed’s nature is one of what he deems unhealthy extremes. That’s why he’s consciously focused now on fi nding balance in his life.
Seed’s extreme origins can be traced to a childhood spent in a damaged home. An alcoholic writer father who didn’t have much time for his son and a co-dependant mother who tried a little too hard to protect her boy set the examples of extremism that would defi ne Huck’s life. His father was a man of extremes also, his love of Mark Twain proving so invasive that he named his son after the author’s most famous character. “If you ever become a famous pitcher,” his father told him, “you won’t need a nickname.”
While their time together may have been sparse, the elder Seed passed on to the younger a love for the game of poker. “He spent most of his time in the casino,” Huck remembers now, his father working as a dealer then staying after shifts to play a few hands. “Every couple of weeks, he and some of his buddies would come home to play and they’d let me sit in.” His mother, wanting young Huck to feel the part, furnished him with all of the trimmings, including candy cigarettes. He was the miniature poker player.
It was another Twain character, delivered to Huck in a rare moment of shared reading with his father, that would prove the most infl uential example in the younger Seed’s life. “I remember my father reading me one of Twain’s short stories. It was about a gambler who bet on everything. I thought that was cool. I knew that was how I wanted to be.” The character was Leonidas Smiley, from Twain’s The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.
Huck moved with his family to Montana in his youth before returning to California – the state where he spent his childhood – for university. By then, he’d been transformed to Leonidas Smiley, betting on anything that could be bet on and showing a profi t in home poker games to coot. It was while driving home from school that he made his fi rst trip to Las Vegas. On that fi rst visit, Huck made $1,000 playing $10/$20 Limit Hold’em. He stopped back in Vegas on his return trip and made a little more.
It was 1990, when Huck was twenty, that poker started becoming a serious vocation. “I won a trip to the World Series. No one carded me… it was just so unusual for a kid that age to be playing the stakes I was,” he remembered in that steady monotone voice.
“I won a lot of satellites.”
People were starting to notice. Amongst those who did was Hans “Tuna” Lund. Huck and Tuna sat together in a $300 buy-in event at what would be the fi nal installment of Amarillo Slim’s Superbowl of Poker. “It got down to three players: me, Frank Henderson, and Barbara Enright, and we split it. During the event, I outplayed Tuna and he complimented my play. I told him, ‘Hans, this is the fi rst time I’ve ever played a No Limit tournament.”’ Lund was impressed and a friendship formed. That led to Lund offering Huck a 40% stake in close friend Brad Daugherty at the 1991 World Series of Poker. Trusting Lund’s judgment, Huck accepted, putting up $5,000. Daugherty won the tournament.
Another professional who was noticing Huck’s rapid rise was Phil Hellmuth. Hellmuth was one year removed from his WSOP championship when the two met. Young men in an old men’s game, they immediately bonded, forging a friendship that lasts to this day. It’s a friendship, however, that’s seen itself interrupted at times by Seed’s demons.
By the time he was 22, Huck had built his bankroll from $20 to $2 million and he was playing in the biggest games in the world. Drugs and alcohol were a part of the lifestyle and, true to his nature, Huck did all of the above to the extreme. The toxins led to depression. The depression made everything in his life crash around him.
“Phil and I would hang out and talk a lot, but when you hit the big depression, you isolate yourself. Phil was married with kids, I was depressed and drinking… I’d go one to two years without talking to family members. So really, the break in our friendship was the depression. i think he was a little hurt by my not calling back or whatever."
While therelationships waned around him, the bad habits didn’t. For 4 years, from age 22 to 26, Huck was feeling the effects. Success and depression deprived him of his competitive fire and it showed in his game. “I started making silly bets and not knowing what to do with my money. I went through a period were I'd play, but I wasn’t working on my game." His bankroll out of control, new leaks lurking around every Vegas corner, he was broke by the time he was twenty-four.
Two years later, in the spring of 1996, things finally started changing for the better. With a new girlfriend came a healthier diet and some of that balance he’s constantly looking for. “I wasn’t playing as much. I’d gotten staked a few months earlier and the Series came around and I thought ‘Sure, why not?’” In hindsight, it was a smart decision; he won the title and the million dollars that went with it. It hardly solved his problems though.
With half of his winnings going to his original stakers, 10% to Gus Hansen, (who’d purchased the piece mid-tournament) and more money still to fulfi ll a fi nal-table split, Huck was left with some $300,000; $220,000 of that went to pay a portion of the debts that had piled up during his darker periods. The $80,000 that he was left with became $400,000 over the following year. In fi nding that aforementioned balance, his time at the table lessened. For the four years after his WSOP win, Huck was happy.
It was when he turned thirty, after a return to the Main Event fi nal table in 1999 that Huck found himself getting back into his worst habits. “Depression, drinking, and drugs. Ecstasy… meth… coke…I did them all.” Despite the monotone, you can hear the regret in his voice. Fortunately, right now, it’s a regret about his past behavior, not his present.
“I haven’t done any of that for two years.” It’s not a boast, but there’s an element of pride there. As the game he found so natural exploded around him, he saw the same trappings available to him, but experience has taught him to avoid the pitfalls. “I went to rehab. I learned some things about myself. I fi gured out why I was doing what I was doing and made a bigger commitment to bettering myin self every day. Before, I’d just quit for eight months, problems would build, and then it would all end in a binge.”
“I’m doing the best with my life that I can right now.” It’s a stoic assessment for a man who knows constant vigilance is required. “Doing the best with his life” means the diversifi cation of his interests; he’s playing poker, but not the eighty-hour weeks he put in fi fteen years ago. Now, he runs, he writes, and he’s reconnecting with the people he holds dear. “We’ve started talking more, especially in the last few months.” The healing has begun.
So what now? “I’m working on myself, avoiding co-dependence, repairing the damage. I’m just trying to be a little balanced. It’s much more important to me now to relate to people, be in touch with my emotions… I’m having good, genuine experiences with people and spending time with friends and family. It’s a good time for me.” Of the fame that’s inevitably accompanied his re-emergence, he says, “I never had a desire to be a TV celebrity or be on TV or be involved with the media. I don’t watch TV… it just wasn’t an interest of mine at any point. It gives me a good way to convey my experiences. I want to share the things I’ve learned.”
“When I was going through my depression, I was still playing poker and would act out my pain at the table – losing, acting badly. Even when I went into isolation, I’d go and be around poker players. I wasn’t focused on my game and other people caught up. Suddenly, I wasn’t that much better than everyone else.” Now though, he’s fi nding that edge again. The man once known for having as many as 120 prop bets going at one time has learned to bet on something more substantial: “It’s a learning experience when you bet on yourself. It teaches you about the capabilities of human beings and what they can do.” In his case, human beings can mature and grow and fl ourish. It’s all just a matter of keeping his balance.
