About Mark “Un” Seif - Professional Poker Player, Poker Analyst & Poker Instructor

Mark Seif is an attorney turned professional poker player who is best known for his ultra-aggressive style of play.  In recent years, he has also evolved into the most popular and prolific poker instructor in the game.  Mark is also the expert analyst and co-host of the highly acclaimed televsion show “Professional Poker Tour” on the Travel Chanel in the United States, and various televsion networks internationally.

Poker has played an important role in Mark’s life ever since he was six years old and started playing in his parents weekly home game.  Whenever, they were short on players and were in need of an another player at the table, Mark got the call - and boy, was he chomping at the bit!  Within a few short months, despite his tender age, Mark became a serious threat at the table, often putting intense pressure on his opponents which included his father.  Mark’s poker playing days were halted (for nearly a decade) at the age of eleven, though, when his father banned him from further home games.  In a key hand towards the end of the night, Mark and his father were the only two remainng in a huge pot.  Mark’s dad bet on the end and Mark raised him with air - a busted flush draw.  As his father studied him, Mark kept his composure and even engaged in a little verbal banter with his dad.  His father finally folded, but insisted on seeing Mark’s cards.  Mark screamed foul, but it was to no avail.  When his father discovered he had been bluffed by his pre-teen son, he was embarrassed and irate.  He ordered Mark to return all the pocket change he had won that night, and did not allow him to play in any further home games.  Mark would not play another hand of poker until he was 19.

While attending UCLA and working part-time as a waiter in a restaurant, Mark finally returned to the game he loved so dearly.  After a Saturday night shift at the old Peppermill in Pasadena, California, Mark and his co-workers decided to play a little poker.  Most of the players stayed up all night playing, and when the game finally broke the next morning, one of Mark’s co-workers suggested they go play at the old Horseshoe poker room in Gardena, California.  Mark had no idea that such a place even existed.  They sped down the Harbor Freeway and immediately jumped in a $1-4 Seven Card Stud game.  Mark crushed the game and was hooked on poker yet again.  This time for life.

While Mark would have loved to play poker all day, everday, he knew that he had to pursue his education to achieve his dream of becoming an attorney.  He often played in Southern California poker rooms several times a week while attending college.  In 1991, he graduated with high honors from UCLA with a bachelors degree in Economics.  He then went on to attend Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.  While in law school, Mark applied the same intense passion he had for poker to his legal studies and the results were remarkable.  Mark graduated cum laude and Order of the Coif (top ten percent) where he also received several American Jurisprudence Academic awards.

While attending Loyola Law School, Mark was selected for a special interniship program at the Los Angeles Dsitrict Attorney’s Office.  Under the supervision of senior Deputy District Attorneys, Mark gained actual criminal trial experience while still attending law  school.  The timing of Mark’s internship couldn’t have been better because the OJ Simpson was in full swing in the Criminal Courts Building in Downtown Los Angeles where Mark was assigned.  Mark was given the task of researching and writing a portion of the People of the State of California’s brief opposing Simpson’s claim of an unlawful search and seizure relating to the infamous glove found by officer Mark Fuhrman when he scaled the wall of Simpson’s estate.  When the preliminary hearing motion was argued on world-wide televsion before Judge Kathleen Kennedy Powell, Mark was on hand to celebrate the People’s success in defeating that motion that would have excluded some important evidence against Simpson.  Mark’s passion for his work at the DA’s Office led to him being asked by the DA’s Office to return for two more stints in the prosecutor’s office.

After Law School, Mark worked for a national law firm specializing in Labor and Employment Law.  After just a couple of years with the firm, Mark was appointed General Counsel of America’s largest business leasing company in Lake Tahoe, California where he lived for a few years.  But in the end, despite his rapid-fire success in law, Mark’s yearning for the poker table was too strong.  He quit practicing law in May 2001, to play poker full-time.

Mark took his savings from the practice of law and made it into his poker bankroll.  He decided to hit the poker tables at Commerce Casino in Los Angeles where he would try to grind out a living playing poker.  In an effort to “diversify” he invested some of his bankroll in mostly technology stocks during the dot com bubble.  Needless to say, his bankroll was decimated and within a year had gone almost broke.  He would build up his bankroll subsequently, playing lower limits, and then would go broke several more times as he played higher limits.  Finally, in 2003, Mark was able to put all the pieces together to be a successful poker pro.  He hasn’t looked back since.

Mark Seif has accrued more than $2,500,000 in live tournament winnings – not to mention his high stakes cash game play. Mark is also among only a handful of players to have even won the PokerStars Sunday Million Tournament twice.  He also made the final table of the main event of the World Championship Of Online Poker in 2005.  But it was his performance at the 2002 World Poker Tour Legends of Poker final table at the Bicycle Casino in Los Angeles that would change and catapult his poker career.  When the first season of the WPT began airing on the Travel Channel in early 2003, he gained widespread public recognition for his poker playing abilities and his table image benefited.

Many poker tournament successes followed, but it was in 2005 that his career and life truly changed. He won two bracelets back to back during that year’s World Series of Poker ” one in the $1,500 Limit Hold’em Shootout (winning over $181,000), and the other in the $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em event (winning over $611,000).  Later in 2005, Mark went on to make the Final Table of two WSOP Circuit Events - No Limit Holdem at Grand Casino Tunica and No Limit Holdem Short-handed at Paris/Bally’s. he then went on to win the US Poker Championship in Seven Card Stud at the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, New Jersey.  Just days later, he thoroughly dominated the US Poker Championship in Hold’em for several days, finally succumbing in 11th place after taking several bad beats.  After taking some time away from the tables in 2006, to get married and welcome his first child into the world, he came back with strength at the 2007 World Poker Tour World Poker Challenge in Reno taking fourth for over $159,000.  In September 2008, Mark made his third World Poker Tour final table appearance at the Borgata Poker Open where he finished fifth and took home $ 287,500

Mark Seif gained acclaim as the commentator/poker analyst on the internationally televised Professional Poker Tour. Mark’s reputation as a top player, his charisma and natural ability to teach led to him becoming one of the most popular poker instructors for the WPT Boot Camp and the WSOP Academy. Mark Seif is currently working exclusively with the WSOP Academy.

In a nutshell, Mark lives, breathes, eats, and sleeps poker, and he couldn’t be happier doing so!

QUICK PROFILE

• Birtday - October 4
• Grew up in Southern California
• Nicknamed Mark “Un” Seif
• Graduate of UCLA
• Graduate of Loyola Law School in Los Angeles
• Known for his ultra-aggressive playing style
• Currently resides in Henderson, NV
• Top rated poker instructor exclusively with WSOP Academy
• Total live tournament winnings as of 2008 exceed $2.5 million
• Wife Jennifer, two daughters Sarah & Ashley, dog Stuey