Rock ‘n’ Roll Poker Open Blows Past Guarantees
With a bit more than $5 million guaranteed over 44 events, the final numbers for the Seminole Hard Rock Rock ‘n’ Roll Poker Open were huge with more than double the guarantees.
After 44 events beginning on Nov 16, the Seminole Hard Rock Rock ‘n’ Roll Poker Open (RRPO) finished on Nov 30 with huge numbers. More than 16,000 entries were recorded across the events, with total prize pools more than double the original guarantees.
With more than $5 million guaranteed, the series was destined to be big, but even the organizers were clearly underestimating the interest. When the final even was completed, the series awarded nearly $13.5 million in prizes.
That made this RRPO the biggest ever for this series, and the fifth biggest series ever for the Seminole Hard Rock. The headline game in the series was one of the best performers - the WPT RRPO Championship was a $3,500 buy-in with $2 million guaranteed, but when the dust settled it more than doubled the guarantee for just shy of $5 million.
Right from the start, the series was clearly going to be a success. The opening event was a $400 Deep Stack with $1 million guaranteed, and more than 6,000 entries lit up the registration desk for a prize pool more than double the guarantee.
Guaranteed Events See Big Numbers
While the series didn’t hit its guarantees for all events, there were several of the guaranteed events that saw massive numbers. In addition to the 2.5x prize pool in the Championship and the 2x prize pool in the opening event, another early game more than tripled its promise.
The $400 Deep Stack No-Limit Hold'em with $50k guaranteed on Nov 21 saw 515 entries for a total prize pool of $172,525. The same day saw the $100k guaranteed $1,100 Six-Max nearly double its guarantee with 193 entries and $187k in prizes while the $200k Deep Stack Pot-Limit Omaha that finished on Nov 22 beat its guarantee as well.
Overall it was a huge series for the guaranteed events, and quite a few players walked away happy with money in their pockets and new trophies for their mantles.
A Few of the Big Games
Event #26: $3,500 WPT RRPO Championship
- Entries: 1,541
- Guarantee: $2 million
- Prize Pool: $4,931,200
- First Place: $785,800
- Winner: Andrew Wilson
- Dates: November 25-30, 2022
The biggest game on the schedule was the $3,500 WPT RRPO Championship and with a prize pool that was nearly 2.5 times the guarantee, it turned into a nice payday for winner Andrew Wilson. He got a bit of a monkey off his back with his first major live title after a couple of near misses in recent years at the WSOP.
Wilson pocketed $785,500 for the win to bring his lifetime live earnings over $1.4 million, but it wasn’t an easy ride for him at the final table. He had to face some serious competition in the form of defending RRPO Champion Gediminas Uselis, two-time WPT champ Chad Eveslage, and three-time WPT champ Brian Altman among others.
Event #1: $400 Deep Stack No-Limit Hold’em
- Entries: 6,134
- Guarantee: $1 million
- Prize Pool: $2,024,200
- First Place: $191,223
- Winner: Peter Hsu
- Dates: November 16-21, 2022
The opening event of this series was huge with more than 6,000 entries making it the third largest field ever in a Florida live poker tournament. That put the total prizes at more than twice the guarantee.
The player who outlasted that massive field was Peter Hsu, scoring the biggest cash of his career in the process. The nearly $200k first prize was almost 5x his previous best score and pushed his online earnings over $400k. As a bit of an added bonus, Hsu bagged the title on a single $400 bullet on Day 1g.
Event #12: $400 Deep Stack No-Limit Hold’em
- Entries: 515
- Guarantee: $50,000
- Prize Pool: $172,525
- First Place: $27,965
- Winner: Scott Baumstein
- November 20, 2022
Event #12 was a bit smaller than some other events with just $50k guaranteed, but the one-day event blew passed that with $172,525. That was nearly 3.5x the original promise.
There was a heads-up chop at the end of this one, with Scott Baumstein coming out on top. While the win was a small one by Baumstein’s standards – he has more than $4.5 million in earnings with a top score of more than $1.65 million – it marked his sixth major series title at the Seminole Hard Rock.
Image Credit: seminolehardrockpokeropen.com
