Poker fans around the globe will get to see a poker tournament with a bit of a rock and roll twist, thanks to the World Poker Tour Regional Series event that came to a close this week. The WPT kicked off the Series with the $5,000 Seminole Hard Rock Fall Open, which was hosted at the Seminole Hard Rock Casino in Florida. Many big names turned up on for the tournament, but in the end it was Harrison Gimbel left strumming victoriously.
The World Poker Tour is a televised series of poker tournaments, hosted in a variety of beautiful locations all around the world. This event was part of the World Poker Tour Regional Series, which isn’t officially recognized in the WPT Player of the Year race, and nor are official WPT titles awarded. They still provide a lot of fun and generate a lot of action, however, and this particular tournament was a fitting prologue to the $10,000 Seminole Hard Rock Showdown, which will be taking place in April next year.
The lack of a title and player points up for grabs didn’t seem to deter too many folks, as the $5,000 buy-in tournament pulled a crowd of 298 hopeful competitors, including big names such as Team PokerStars Pro Jason Mercier. There were two Day Ones to the tournament, and the format allowed for players who were eliminated in the first of these to buy back in for another shot at the big money. This generated a prize pool which exceeded $1.4 Million, to be divided amongst the top 27 players once the bubble burst.
While there’s no doubt in anybody’s mind that he’ll be ecstatic over this win, it wasn’t the first big poker success enjoyed by Harrison Gimbel in his young life. The twenty year old has had a fantastic year, which he kicked off by winning the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in the first week of January, netting him a staggering first place prize of $2,200,000. He placed in the money in the European Poker Tour San Remo stop, and has now once again shown he has what it takes to go the distance, this time in his home state of Florida, at the Seminole Hard Rock Casino.
After battling his way through the majority of the field, there didn’t seem to be much time at the final table during which Gimbel didn’t possess the chip lead, a fact which he definitely used to his advantage. Slowly the players dropped by the way-side until he was left alone at the table with Anthony Ruberto, and the two decided to chop the prize money. The deal saw Ruberto walk away with $275,252, and Gimbel received the victory and $330,000 in first place prize money.
The official final table results are as follows:
1st: Harrison Gimbel – $330,000
2nd: Anthony Ruberto – $275,252
3rd: Fred Goldberg – $144,733
4th: Raj Vohra – $92,103
5th: Albert Jinsu Kim – $65,788
6th: Aaron Schaff – $56,577
7th: Alex Findlay – $43,420
8th: Anthony Pope – $31,578
9th: Allie Prescott – $30,262