On the evening of Jonathan Duhamel’s crowning as the reigning World Series of Poker Championship, two Poker Legends were inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame. Erik Seidel and Dan Harrington are the thirty ninth and fortieth Poker legends to make the cut. As happy as Duhamel must have been, surely a part of him looked forward to someday being classed with this group of players.

Erik Seidel was born November 6^th, 1959 in New York City, New York. Seidel started out in the stock market which is a field notoriously linked to the Poker world. He first became a tournament backgammon player for eight years. It was at the Mayfair Club in Manhattan that Seidel cut his teeth on Poker along with many other great poker players including Dan Harrington and Howard Lederer. In Seidel’s first major poker tournament, he finished second to Johnny Chan in the 1988 World Series of Poker Main Event. Clips from the final table were used in the movie “Rounders”, immortalizing Seidel in his loss. Seidel made the final table of the main event one more time in 1999 finishing fourth in the year that the championship was won by Noel Furlong. In 1992 Seidel won his first WSOP bracelet and most recently he won his eighth in 2007. To show his wide range of poker skills all you have to notice is that his eight bracelets were in five different varieties of poker including Hold Em, Omaha, Deuce to Seven Draw, Seidel has earned over $4.3 million in his sixty WSOP cashes and over ten million it total tournament winnings including first place in the 2008 World Poker Tour Foxwoods Poker Classic, second place in both the 2007 and 2008 Aussie Millions Main Events, and second in the 2010 National Heads Up Championship.

Also inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame this year was Dan Harrington. Harrington was born during World War II on December 6^th, 1945 in Santa Monica, California. In spite of the fact that Harrington is know as a conservative poker player, he carried the moniker of “Action Dan”. Harrington won the 1995 World Series of Poker Main Event and his success at the Main Event is without parallel. Harrington has made it to four Main Event Final Tables. In addition to the year that he won, he was at the final table in 1987 (6^th), 2003 (4^th), and 2004 (4^th). Making Main Event Final tables in two consecutive years during the time of increased participation in the event is considered his greatest accomplishment. While more than half of Harrington’s over $6 million in tournament winnings came from the WSOP, Harrington is one of only five other poker players to have won the WSOP Main Event and a World Poker Tour Title. Before becoming a Poker Pro and a businessman, Harrington was a bankruptcy lawyer and a former Massachusetts State Chess Champion. He also played poker against Bill Gates while at Harvard. Harrington can only be seen wearing his signature green Boston Red Sox cap at a few WSOP and WPT events per year. He considers himself a part time poker player devoting much of his time to his business, Anchor Loans, and his real estate and stock market investments.