Band Shirts & Poker Tournaments
As Virginia's Dennis Backhaus grinded away in the $600 Kickoff Event of the Maryland State Poker Championship at Live! Casino and Hotel Maryland, attentive players at the table may have noticed the bright graphic of a shield-wielding Viking warrior on his black t-shirt.
The shirt was of the Swedish band Amon Amarth, whose music has been categorized as melodic death metal and Viking metal, two subgenres of heavy metal characterized by fast tempos, growled vocals and lyrics of Norse mythology.
As a music fan, band shirts tend to stand out to me in crowded poker tournament fields. Spotting one on Erik Seidel inspired me to write this piece on the Poker Hall of Famer's similar love for music. I also happen to be a fan of Amon Amarth and even saw them in concert a decade ago.
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Just as Sweden has produced some of the greatest poker players of all time — think Viktor "Isildur1" Blom and Niklas Astedt — the Scandinavian country has also birthed many of the biggest death metal bands in the world and is known for its prominent metal scenes in Stockholm and Gothenburg.
Backhaus has $66,943 in Hendon Mob earnings, two first-place finishes at Maryland Live! and excellent taste in music.
