2015 Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown
$350 Six-Max No-Limit Hold’em (Single Re-Entry)
$30,000 Guarantee

April 7th, 2015

Total Entries:  84
Total Prize Pool:  $30,000

Recap:

After staying up all night in Tampa playing in cash games, Jordan Peralta drove down to Hollywood, Florida on Tuesday morning to play in Event 3 ($350 6-Max NLHE). Peralta arrived at the Seminole Hard Rock at about 1:00 pm to enter the tournament — and 11 hours later, he had outlasted the entire field of 84 entries to win the trophy and $8,088.

This is the first live tournament victory for Peralta, a 22-year-old professional cash game player from Honolulu, Hawaii, and the pride on his face was visible for everyone to see. Exhausted from a long day, Peralta simply described the experience as “Amazing.”

For much of the final table, it appeared that destiny favored Nigel Murray, who took the lead with six players remaining and held it all the way to heads-up play. Murray is currently ranked second on the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Player of the Year leaderboard, so he was looking to pick up POY points in addition to the trophy and the prize money.

Peralta called Murray “the best player at the table,” and said he was more focused on outlasting the other final table players. When other players discussed possible chops to end the tournament early, Peralta kept saying “Let’s play,” even though he was the short stack.

After Dwight Barclay was eliminated in third place, Murray held a 525K-to-325K lead over Peralta, with blinds at 4K-8K. Soon after that, Peralta got it all in preflop with against Murray’s , and his pocket pair held up to effectively reverse the chip counts and give Peralta the lead.

The next hand would be the last one. Murray got it all in with against Peralta’s , and the final board came — the ace on the turn clinched the victory for Peralta.

Peralta plans to get some long-overdue sleep and then get right back in the action by playing in Event 4 ($350 Black Chip Bounty No-Limit Hold’em).

This was the third tournament of the series, and with 84 total entries, the guaranteed prizepool of $30,000 was paid out to the final two tables (12 players), listed below.

Results:

1st:  Jordan Peralta  –  $8,088
2nd:  Nigel Murray  –  $5,478
3rd:  Dwight Barclay  –  $3,579
4th:  Frank Argano  –  $2,862
5th:  Al Gomez  –  $2,148
6th:  Dominik Papa  –  $1,653
7th:  Steve Weintraub  –  $1,239
8th:  Steve Pollack  –  $1,239
9th:  Bryan Munoz  –  $1,239
10th:  Arthur Holmes  –  $825
11th:  Georges Boyadjian  –  $825
12th:  Charles Townsend  –  $825