Event 10: Errol Massey Chops Up a Hi-Lo Win at Seminole

2018 Lucky Hearts Poker Open
Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino 
Hollywood, Florida
Event 10
$300 Omaha 8/Stud 8 (Re-Entry)
Entries: 79
Prize Pool: $20,145
January 16, 2018

Errol Massey

Errol Massey is the winner of Event 11, the $300 mixed hi-lo event at Lucky Hearts. He claimed the trophy and the top prize of $5,668 in a heads-up deal with Stephen Reid.

Massey is a full-time player from Kingston, Jamaica. He now makes his home here in Hollywood, Florida, so this home-turf victory is extra sweet.

“I love this game so much,” he said in his postgame interview. He plays all forms of the game, but four-card, split-pot poker is his specialty. “Sometimes I take a break from hold’em and travel around to play this game.”

Things didn’t go so well at the beginning of this one, but the eventual champ turned it around on his second chance. “My first buy-in, I busted early,” he said. “But then I told myself I can’t give up that easily. I love this, so I said, ‘All right, let’s try it again,'”

Massey was still trying to recover from a disappointing performance a day prior, when he busted the H.O.R.S.E. event on the direct money bubble. “I couldn’t sleep last night,” he said.

Perhaps he’ll have an easier time tonight. Massey passed through the money bubble with ease this time, entering the final table third in chips. He got right to work thinning the table, too, eliminating JJ Liu in ninth place. He did the same to Wes Chong in eighth place, then Sam Mann in seventh, too.

Robert Campbell eliminated the next three players, but Massey eliminated him in third place, adding all of those chips to his own stack. That left him heads-up with Reid for the trophy, and the duo decided to call it a night.

Massey initially refused to give up the trophy in a deal, but once he took the chip lead, the two men shook hands and headed to the payout desk together.

Final  results:

1st: Errol Massey – $5,668*
2nd: Stephen Reid – $5,069*
3rd: Robert Campbell – $2,458
4th: Elliott Zaydman – 1,662
5th: Michael Rosenberg – $1,259
6th: Christian Ivens – $1,007
7th: Sam Mann – $907
8th: Wes Chong – $806
9th: J.J. Liu – $705
10th: Hal Rotholz – $604
* denotes heads-up deal