The headline of the weekend may have been the failure of the 2014 Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open (SHRPO) to come anywhere near its $10 million guaranteed prize pool (read: $2.5 million short), but after the shock of the massive overlay, there was still poker to be played. Sunday’s Day 2 saw 478 of the original 1,499 players return for the first day with a unified field. Coming out of Day 2 as the chip leader over a remaining field of just 62 was John Dolan with 3,005,000 chips.
Dolan is no stranger to going deep in a large field tournament. In 2010, he made the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event November Nine, placing sixth for $1,772,959. He also finished as the runner-up in the 2012 $10,000 Seminole Hard Rock Showdown for $459,360. All told, Dolan has won over $3.2 million on the live tournament circuit and has cashed in the WSOP 15 times.
The money bubble burst on Sunday with the elimination of Joe Weissman in 301st place when his pocket Queens ran into a flush.
Dolan has a sizable lead over Farhan Madhani, his closest competitor, enjoying a nearly 1 million chip advantage. Those two players are the only two over 2 million and after fourth place, the tournament leaders are bunched up as tightly as can be for a tournament this size. The spread between fifth and tenth place is just 165,000 chips and seventh through tenth place are virtually tied.
That tiny chip gap has also created one of the more interesting tables for Day 3: Table 7. Of the eight players to have reported chip counts, four of them have between about 1.1 million and 1.3 million chips, while a fifth, Martin Hanowsky, has a bit more than 1.8 million, good for third place entering Monday’s action. The “Little Sisters of the Poor” table looks like Table 8, which doesn’t have anyone with more than 750,000 chips. John Dolan should have a fun time bullying his opponents, as he is sitting at Table 15 with seven players who have fewer than 700,000 chips. His only immediate “competition” is Eugene Curzio, who has 1.2 million chips, still less than half Dolan’s stack. This is poker, though, so a single hand can change the course of the tournament.
Day 3 of the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open has just gotten underway on this Labor Day holiday in the United States as the 62 remaining players try to make it closer to the final table.
2014 Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open Main Event – Day 2 Chip Leaders
1. John Dolan – 3,005,000
2. Farhan Madhani – 2,191,000
3. Martin Hanowski – 1,848,000
4. Sergey Rybachenko – 1,739,000
5. Robert Park – 1,390,000
6. Joe Kuether – 1,333,000
7. David Tiffenberg – 1,239,000
8. Daniel Colman – 1,237,000
9. Eugene Curzio – 1,228,000
10. Hans Winzeler – 1,225,000
*Tournament information courtesy seminolehardrockpokeropen.com.
