There are now seven players remaining in Event 18 ($240 Pot-Limit Omaha), and two of them were eliminated on the same hand leading into the break.
Three players got it all in after a flop of . Here were their cards, in descending order of chip stacks:
Seth Weinberg: (Wrap straight draw) Kevin Spires: (pocket aces w/ a pair of sixes) Brandon Navarrete: (pair of queens)
The turn was the , the river was the , and Weinberg won the pot with a seven-high straight to eliminate Spires in 8th place and shorter-stacked Navarrete in 9th.
At that point, the players took their break. Here are the official chip counts as the blinds increase to 6,000-12,000:
They’ve reached the final table of 10 players in Event 19 ($150 No-Limit Hold’em), and play will continue until they reach a winner, with a first prize of $11,243.
Here are the official chip counts with the blinds increasing to 3,000-6,000 with a 1,000 ante. The average chip stack is about 208,000 (34 big blinds).
Seat 1. Harold Lam – 274,000 (45 bb) Seat 2. Jason Lux – 143,000 (23 bb) Seat 3. Alan Feller – 116,000 (19 bb) Seat 4. Kristopher Stupicic – 266,000 (44 bb) Seat 5. Esteban Consalvo – 327,000 (54 bb) Seat 6. Oneil McCalla – 100,000 (16 bb) Seat 7. Michael Chaffe – 352,000 (58 bb) Seat 8. Michael Bange – 217,000 (36 bb) Seat 9. Matthew Elsarelli – 128,000 (21 bb) Seat 10. Jennifer David – 149,000 (24 bb)
11th: Pinchas Chakchakov – $541 12th: Luis Bueno – $541 13th: Alfonso Perez – $437
They’ve reached the final table of 10 players in Event 18 ($240 Pot-Limit Omaha), and from this point forward all of the action will be visible on the live stream available at SHRPOLive.com/live.
Play will continue until they reach a winner, with a first prize of $11,360.
Here are the updated chip counts with the blinds at 4,000-8,000. The average chip stack is about 323,000 (40 big blinds).
Those were the counts at the break, but there were two quick eliminations in the first five minutes back, as Steve Yagudaev (14th place) and Derek McClinton (13th) were sent to the payout desk.
Here is a look at the prizepool, along with the players already eliminated today:
Poker players from around the country are arriving in big numbers today to be here in time for the start of the $10 Million Guaranteed Main Event, which starts tomorrow. So while today is a light day on the schedule (only one event — $150 NLHE — is scheduled to start today), the room is packed with poker players who want a piece of one of the largest poker pies outside of the WSOP Main Event.
The $575 mega-satellite that started at 12:00 noon has already attracted 485 players in two-and-a-half levels, and registration is open for another 45 minutes or so. Yesterday’s noon mega had a field of 600 players, awarding 60 seats into the main event.
Of course, that’s just one of the satellites that will be running today.
In the trophy events, Event 18 ($240 PLO) has just restarted with 17 players who will play down to a winner today, and Event 19 ($150 NLHE) resumes play at 3:00 pm with 13 players remaining.
Event 20 ($150 NLHE) begins at 6:00 pm, and it’s the last prelim event before the main event. The next prelim after that will be Event 22 ($300 NLHE), which starts on Monday.
Tuesday night’s action came to an end around 3:00 am with 17 players remaining in Event 18 ($240 Pot-Limit Omaha Double Stack) and 13 players remaining in Event 19 ($150 No-Limit Hold’em).
Event 18 ($240 Pot-Limit Omaha Double Stack)
Entrants: 202 Prizepool: $40,400 First Prize: $11,306
1. Michael Wakefield – 550,000 2. Seth Weinberg – 326,500 3. Gabriel Ramos – 304,500 4. Vinny Pahuja – 272,000 5. Sunny Miller – 252,000 6. Errol Massey – 219,500 7. Brandon Navarrette – 218,000 8. Kevin Spieres – 159,000 9. Steve Yagudaev – 153,500 10. Mark Wahba – 150,000 11. Kenneth Coleman – 126,500 12. Georgio Rousos – 125,000 13. Eitan Dahan – 111,000 14. Perry Anglin – 107,500 15. Derek McLinton – 68,000 16. Barry Roth – 52,500 17. Raj Nasta – 19,500
Day 2 of Event 18 will begin at 1:00 pm.
Event 19 ($150 No-Limit Hold’em)
Entrants: 347 Prizepool: $41,640 First Prize: $11,243
1. Michael Chaffe – 380,500 2. Harold Lam – 304,000 3. Michael Bange – 294,000 4. Esteban Consalvo – 250,000 5. Kristopher Stupicic – 237,000 6. Jennifer David – 125,000 7. Jason Lux – 107,500 8. Alan Feller – 96,500 9. Oneil McCalla – 84,500 10. Matthew Elsarelli – 83,000 11. Pinchas Chakchakov – 76,500 12. Luis Bueno – 51,500 13. Alfonso Perez – 30,500
Day 2 of Event 19 will begin at 3:00 pm.
In addition to mega-satellites running throughout the day (Tuesday’s noon mega-satellite awarded 60 seats into the $10 Million Guaranteed Main Event), there is only trophy event that begins tomorrow (Wednesday) — Event 20 ($150 No-Limit Hold’em), which starts at 6:00 pm.
The $5,300 No-Limit Hold’em Main Event with a $10 Million Guarantee begins on Thursday, and top players from around the country are already arriving into town, ready to play.
There are currently two trophy events in progress, along with a couple of satellites into the $10 Million Guaranteed Main Event.
It’s currently a dinner break for the final 63 players in Event 18 ($240 Pot-Limit Omaha w/ Double Stack), and the average stack is about 51,000 (63 big blinds).
The final 27 players will finish in the money, and here is the prizepool they’re playing for:
A huge cheer just erupted in the tournament room here at the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open, as the Money Bubble finally burst in the 600-player $575 mega-satellite that started at 12:00 noon. One poor soul finished 61st to earn nothing, while the other 60 players now have seats to the $10 Million Guaranteed Main Event that starts on Thursday.
There are several other mega-satellites in progress with smaller fields, as well as two trophy events — Event 18 ($240 Pot-Limit Omaha) and Event 19 ($150 No-Limit Hold’em).
The biggest event of the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open Showdown leading up to the $10 million main event was Event 7, a $560 No-Limit Hold’em tournament with a $1 million guarantee. As has been the trend here all series, the field smashed the guarantee, creating a prizepool just shy of $1.7 million.
The tournament needed to attract 2,000 players to reach the guarantee; it attracted 3,389. They started in six flights spread across three days, and then it took another two full days to play down to a winner.
The last player standing was Ray Piccin, who overcame a tough final table and a big chip deficit at the start of heads-up play to win $291,087 and a Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown guitar-shaped trophy.
The final day of action began with 19 players remaining, and it took a while to reach the nine-handed final table. Day 2 chipleader Bryan Campanello held his position at the top of the leaderboard, but the final table didn’t work out as well for him, as we went up and down a bit before finding himself down to just 10 big blinds.
With five players remaining in Hand #48, Campanello open-shoved with , but he found himself involved in a three-way preflop all-in situation against Jon Cohen’s and the of Darren Rabinowitz. The best hand held up, eliminating the start-of-day chipleader (Campanello) and catapulting Rabinowitz up the leaderboard.
Unfortunately for Darren Rabinowitz, this would be as close as he would get to the trophy.
That started a big rush for Rabinowitz, who won several big pots to control nearly half the chips in play with four players left. The biggest pot in that span was a cooler worth 38 million when he flopped a set of queens against chipleader Neville Darrell’s set of sixes, and they got it all in with full houses on the river.
With three players remaining, Rabinowitz seemed to be in complete control with 78% of the chips in play at one point, with Piccin and Darrell effectively tied for the shortest stack. Rabinowitz made a few casual offers for striking a deal, but Piccin didn’t seem interested. As it turned out, Piccin was right not to deal.
In Hand #126, the two short stacks got it all in for a race situation with Piccin’s against Darrell’s . The loser would either be crippled or eliminated, and the winner would still face a 3-to-1 chip deficit against Rabinowitz.
The board came low, and the pocket sevens held up for Piccin to win; Darrell received $124,630 for third place.
Once heads-up play began, it turned into the Piccin show, as he steadily wore down the chip stack of Rabinowitz over the next 26 hands to effectively tie it up in Hand #152. Thirty-four hands later, Piccin won it all in Hand #186.
Rabinowitz was below 20 big bilnds when he limp-shoved with , and Piccin called with .
The board came , and Piccin won the trophy, the title, and $291,087 with two pair, kings and jacks.
It was the biggest score of Piccin’s live tournament career, more than 100 times his previous high, and 519 times more than the buy-in of $560.
Congratulations to Ray Piccin!
1st: Ray Piccin – $291,087 2nd: Darren Rabinowitz – $190,125 3rd: Neville Darrell – $124,630 4th: Jon Cohen – $104,635 5th: Bryan Campanello – $85,150 6th: Ben Zamani – $66,935 7th: Johnny Miller – $49,140 8th: Wendy Freedman – $33,045 9th: Sam Barnhart – $23,725