It took five days, but the final table of six is set at the $3,500 World Poker Tour Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown. The players will be flown to Las Vegas and finish the tournament in front of cameras at the HyperX Arena located in the Luxor on May 25.
The $3 million guarantee was blown away by the 2,290 entries who built a $7.3 million prize pool. Whoever wins it will become an instant millionaire thanks to the $1,128,250 top prize, which includes entry into the $10,400 WPT World Championship in December.
They all already won $238,000, but there’s plenty more to bag:
- $1,128,250 and a WPT World Championship entry
- $745,000
- $550,000
- $413,000
- $312,000
- $238,000
Unhitch your imagination and try to experience what the following players will go through the next three weeks preparing to fight for that million bucks:
- Bin Weng — 46,050,000 (154 bb)
- Sridhar Sangannagari — 19,100,000 (64 bb)
- Mitch Garshofsky — 18,550,000 (62 bb)
- David Mzareulov — 13,350,000 (45 bb)
- Naing Thu — 13,250,000 (44 bb)
- Rafael Farah Jarufe — 4,275,000 (14 bb)
Bin been banging
Chip leader Bin Weng is having a very good 2023. He started the year with his first $1 million haul by winning the $5,300 The Return at the Borgata on January. He outlasted 1,141 in that tournament.
A little over a month later, Weng won his first World Series of Poker Circuit ring in the $1,700 headliner at the Horseshoe in Las Vegas for $227,344.
The 40 year-old from Philadelphia has cashed in 14 tournaments so far in 2023, and if he manages to finish the job on May 25, he’ll be in the top 10 of the Global Poker Index Player of the Year Race.
But Weng, even with his large stack of chips, will have to bring his A-game against the five remaining opponents, all who are smart and competent players.
Sridhar Sangannagari has cashed plenty of times in live events, but the New Jersey resident is an online poker banger. Playing under the name “sri100k,” he took down the PokerStars Championship of Online Poker in New Jersey in September of 2021, and has gone deep in dozens of other big buy-in online events. He’s 47.
This is Mitch Garshofsky’s seventh cash on the WPT trail, but the first final table for the Las Vegas resident. This cash puts Garshofsky, 63, into the $2 million life-time tournament category. A victory would put a three in front of that number.
Thanks to this cash, Houston’s David Mzareulov, 36, is now in the $1 million lifetime tournament club. He nearly won the $10,200 mystery bounty event at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in January, but stalled in third for $64,600.
The two men at the bottom of final table’s chip count, Florida’s Naing Thu and Peru’s Rafael Farah Jarful, 55, instantly multiplied their lifetime cashes ($34K and $35K each) by eight with their first real deep runs in a marque tournament.
The Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown final table is the first of three that will be filmed for television by the WPT at the end of May.
The final table of WPT Choctaw, which runs from May 5-8, will take place at Luxor’s HyperX Arena Friday, May 26, and the final table of the WPT Gardens Poker Championship, which runs May 21-25, will be taped on Saturday, May 27.
CardsChat will be there to cover the finish to these tourneys.
