Farid Jattin Wins Seminole Hard Rock Tampa Winter Poker Open For $241K
6 years ago21 Dec
The Hard Rock Seminole in Tampa, Florida was the place to be this week, assuming you were stateside and weren’t rolled for flying out to the PokerStars Championship in Prague. Despite the draw of the European scene, The Hard Rock was able to scrape together 670 players into its poker room in three Day 1 shifts. Almost 40% more than last year.
These players were all down South for more than the Florida oranges: each player stumped up $1,650 to enter and by Day 1B the $500k guarantee was buried. When the final count was in, the prize pool was a little over one million US total, of which $241,651 and a guitar were put aside for first.
By the time the sun set on the Sunshine State for the third time, the field was small enough for everyone to gather in one room for a gruelling 14 hour Day 2. Nine players returned on Day 3 for the final table.
The Guitar Question
The final nine were all guaranteed at least $19,124; but all eyes were on the first place guitar which was branded – with typical Floridian taste and elegance – in the gaudy blue and purple of the Hard Rock logo. The near quarter of a million dollars up top probably never crossed their avaricious little minds.
In the end though, the table shook out fairly predictably. Farid Jattin – Columbia’s number one live tourney earner – started Day 2 as the chip leader and went from there into Day 3 with nearly a quarter of the total chips in play. In fact he was pretty much never in danger.
The Final Note
There were a couple of hardened Hard Rock veterans in the final nine, but it wasn’t just a crowd of hometown heroes who Jattin was up against. John Racener who won a WSOP bracelet in the $10k Dealer’s Choice event this year was also dogging Jattin’s heels until a misstep dropped him in 6th place.
Jattin on the other hand, held it together and mopped up the remaining players in double quick time.
“I feel like I put up a really good performance,” Jattin said in a post win interview. “I was really, really focused the whole time [...] I ran pretty good, but I felt like I played amazing. I don’t feel like I made any big mistakes.”
Which is more than can be said for whoever chose the decals for that guitar.
Final Table Results
1 | Farid Jattin | $241,651 |
2 | Witold Wassik | $135,878 |
3 | Scott Caracciolo | $85,553 |
4 | Joseph Skarzynski | $69,449 |
5 | Filipp Khavin | $55,358 |
6 | John Racener | $45,796 |
7 | Satish Surapaneni | $36,737 |
8 | Kevin O’Donnell | $27,679 |
9 | Mike Laake | $19,124 |
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