At 6-feet 7-inches tall, armed with a quiet confidence, Huck Seed is one of the most intimidating players to have at the poker table.

In March, Seed won the 2009 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship title to add to his four World Series of Poker bracelets, including the Main Event in 1996.

During a break in Day 2 of the 2009 WSOP’s Special 40th Annual No-Limit Hold’em $40,000 buy-in tournament, Seed sat down with BluffMagazine.com to talk about his play this year.

What are your goals for this year’s World Series?

My goals for this year’s World Series is to not play too much, not burn myself out. I guess I have negative goals. To put it in a positive way: to pace myself, just play a nice balanced amount so I can stay intense and focus and have fun while I’m playing.

How does your performance in the $40,000 tournament set the tone for the rest of the WSOP?

It has no affect at all. I try not to be too results oriented, so my results don’t usually affect me. I kind of analyze my play or what happened. I might have won a tournament, but I might have thought that I played terrible or I might have gotten knocked out pretty early but I was very happy with how I played, so the result doesn’t matter too much to me.

How are you looking at your play right now after Day 1 and about halfway through Day 2?

I was pretty happy with my play yesterday, it was pretty good. I made a bad call against Doyle (Brunson), but he made a really good bet that looked kind of bluffy. I can’t say it was my bad play or his great play or whatever, but I made one wrong decision there with a big call on the river. I made a lot of really nice plays. I feel pretty good today.

Talk about winning the NBC Heads-Up tournament and how you carry momentum from that into the WSOP.

I felt a little momentum for a couple weeks after the heads-up tournament, but it kind of fizzled out after that point, after two or three weeks. No momentum from that really.

Does being a Main Event champion give you an extra edge or more confidence when you come back and play here year after year in the WSOP?

Not really for me because it was so long ago. It was 13 years ago. I’m a totally different person now. I was 26 then, I’m 40 now. It’s like a whole other lifetime almost.

How has your play changed in the last 13 years?

You can write 10 books on that. I try and stay with the times, adjust to the players. The play is a lot different now, so my play is obviously going to be different.

In the $40k, you’re playing against a lot of the biggest names in the poker world. How does playing in the “Big Game” and the heads-up tournament where you have a lot of the same players, how does that . . .

A lot of the better players in this tournament play high stakes cash games, so that’s a really good way to prepare for this kind of a tournament. Whenever you’re at a very tough table with a lot of high level players, that’s the kind of experience you need.

The way to prepare for a tougher tournament is to just seek out tougher opponents, practice against tougher opponents. The best way to prepare for tough opponents is to play against tough opponents.

You have four WSOP bracelets — Pot Limit Omaha, No Limit Hold’em and two in Razz. What is the key to being a great all-around poker player and not just a specialist?

I think playing all the games makes it fun and different, it just kind of keeps it fresh. There are so many different forms of poker, it’s great that the World Series has every different event. And now they have the mixed games and I’m happy that they’re keeping alive the (No Limit 2-7 Triple Draw Low Ball). I think that if you play all the games it can add something to your one game. You can always learn a little something in one game and apply it to the other even though they’re different.

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