Poker Hall of Fame Inducts Huckleberry Seed As Its 59th Member

The prestigious Poker Hall of Fame (PHoF) has welcomed a new member! Huckleberry Seed became the latest player to have been bestowed the honor. The 1996 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event champion is the sole inductee in 2020.
Voting Process
The selection system adopted an open-nomination process, with the public allowed to nominate who they think deserves to become a Poker Hall of Famer.
Player-nominees must not be younger than 40 years old at the time of nomination, must have battled it out in the high-stakes felts, must have played consistently well, gained the respect of peers, and must have stood the test of time; or if the nominee is a non-player, they must have made a huge contribution to the overall growth of the game.
Huckleberry Seed was also nominated in 2019, alongside Antonio Esfandiari, Ted Forrest, Eli Elezra, Chris Ferguson, and Mike Matusow, all of whom also made it to the final shortlist of nominees this year. Joining them were high-stakes star Patrik Antonius, World Poker Tour tournament director Matt Savage, poker broadcasters Norman Chad and Lon McEachern, and PokerStars founder Isai Scheinberg.
The final say came from the 31 living Hall of Fame members, each of whom had 10 points to distribute. All but one of them were able to cast their ballots, and ultimately it was Seed who received the most number of votes at 76.
Savage and Scheinberg came in 2nd and 3rd, with 51 and 45 points respectively. Elezra got 30 votes, followed by Esfandiari with 23. McEachern and Chad received 20 points, Matusow got 17, and Antonius got 15. Ferguson had the lowest number of votes at 3.
Seed, a four-time WSOP bracelet winner, was finally inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame after being nominated numerous times over the past few years.
He becomes the 59th individual to receive the honor and now joins the legends’ club, comprised of some of the greatest and most influential poker players and personalities of all time, such as Johnny Chan, Bobby Baldwin, Barbara Enright, Doyle Brunson, Phil Hellmuth, Mike Sexton, Daniel Negreanu, Erik Seidel, Linda Johnson, Phil Ivey, and last year’s inductees David Oppenheim and Chris Moneymaker.
Seed’s Poker Achievements
Seed was born in California but grew up in Montana. He began his poker journey in 1989. That year, he decided to take a leave of absence from college to play poker. He was studying electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology but never returned to college to focus on becoming a poker pro.  Standing at 6 feet, 7 inches tall, Seed also played basketball and was a star player on Caltech’s basketball team during his college days.
His first tournament cash came in 1990, based on his Hendon Mob profile, and since then he went on to win over $7.6 million competing in live tournaments. He captured his first WSOP bracelet in 1994 after winning a $2,500 Pot Limit Omaha tournament for $167,000. He also won a couple of Razz tournaments in 2000 and 2003 for nearly $150,000 in combined winnings.
His biggest WSOP victory took place in 1996 when he won the $10,000 Main Event for a career-best $1,000,000.
Seed also won the 2003 WSOP Tournament of Champions for $550,000, and reached the final table of two $50K Poker Players Championship events. Apart from that, the 51-year-old also holds an NBC Heads-Up Championship title, having won the tournament in 2009 for $500,000.
The King of Prop Bets
Seed is not only well-known for his massive accomplishments as a poker pro, as he has also been involved in several prop bets, among them was with Phil Hellmuth where he bet $10,000 (also reported to be $50,000) that he could float in the ocean for either 18 or 24 hours (which he lost). He also took a golf prop bet involving six figures and won.
In 2018, Seed made a $100K prop bet that he could spend 30 days in the bathroom alone and in complete darkness with almost nothing. He was also involved in other prop bets with Howard Lederer and Doyle Brunson.