Event 7 at The Poker Room at Seminole Hard Rock was the largest buy-in yet at the “Rock ‘n’ Roll Poker Open” and with a $50,000 guarantee it was no shock that it drew an impressive field of 135 players creating a prize pool of $67,500. When we reached the final table, there was an intense and heated debate about making a deal that lasted for twenty minutes. Finally, the floor stepped in and play resumed. We would see two players exit, both of the remaining women in the field, and as it approached the end of the day, the players once again talked deal. This time, a reasonable conclusion was reached and the seven remaining players did a deal based on the player’s chip stacks. As a result, Todd Zojaji was declared the winner since he was the chip leader at the time.

Todd, a 46 year old retired business man, has been playing poker for nine years. The $13,326 he took home for his win here today is one of his largest tournament scores to date. Zojaji is mainly a tournament player who dabbles in cash games at times. When asked what he planned to do with his new found cash, Todd simply said “play some more poker.”

Our final table started with Frank Mieses having the chip lead with 712K. He was followed closely by Italian player Giahluca Trebbi who had 532K. Zojaji rounded out the top three with 507K.

Marina Koles would be our first player eliminated when she got it all in with pocket 6’s against the Jacks of Mio Rodriguez. Rodriguez would end up hitting a flush with the to take down the pot. Koles won $1,350 for her finish.

Our next elimination would be the last woman standing as Jennifer David took her short stack of approximately 50K and moved all in with . Her opponent had and would prevail sending David to the cage to collect her $1,958 in winnings.

Seven handed play went on for several hours with a few notable pots taking place. The first one saw Michael Davis triple up when he got it all in with Jacks against two players and they were unable to outdraw him. Mio Rodriguez would take down a huge pot against Frank Mieses on a board when he tabled A-J. All Mieses could do was muck after sending 325K in called bets over to Mio.

Talks about a deal were brought up again and the players counted down their stacks:

The floor gave out the chip chop amounts and unlike the first time there was little debate and a deal was made. The final payouts for Event 7 were as follows: