Francois Zayas Turns $360 Into Over $100K

Miami Springs resident Francois Zayas really made his trip to the Seminole Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood, FL worthwhile: he bought in for $360 for the Ultimate Re-entry event at the Rock 'n' Roll Poker Open and walked away with $107,973 after a final table deal. That is 29,892.50% ROI.

Seminole Hard Rock’s latest tournament series, the Rock N’ Roll Poker open kicked off on November 15th and goes on all the way until November 29th. One of the biggest events were the $360 Ultimate Re-entry.

As the name suggests, players could bust out and re-buy unlimited times during the eight Day1’s of the tournament. One could even buy in multiple times on multiple flights and carry their biggest stacks with them if they survive a Day1 more than once, while getting a $2,500 cash payout for every uncarried stack. 

By the time Day2 eventually came, the number of entries had gone up to 3,570 which gave the tournament a glamorous $1,071,000 prize pool, more than double the initially guaranteed $500,000.

Florida amatuer and practicing dentist Francois Zayas got the biggest piece of that, pocketing $107.973 after the last seven players decided to make an ICM deal at the final table. Zayas was one of the players who did not re-buy once during the tournament, he navigated his original 15,000-chip starting stack to victory.

With that impressive feat, Zayas turned his $360 into $107,973, making a ridiculously high 29,892.50% return on his investment. He also exceeded his former biggest live cash by a wide margin - that was $14,500, from back in 2013.

“It was awesome” - said Zayas about his massive payday. “I ran good since Day 1 and today I ran like a god.”

Final Table Results (after ICM deal made by the last seven remaining players):

The super high ROI one can earn through playing these low buy-in, large field events was a popular topic of debate during this year’s WSOP. Daniel Negreanu was one of the biggest critic of the new Player of the Year point system which was largely based on ROI - Negreanu often pointed out how overrepresented these kinds of results were in WSOP PoY contest.