Forgotten with all the excitement of the World Series of Poker Main Event and the winding down of the WSOP in general (even by me!) was that the World Poker Tour got back in action this past week. Currently underway is the WPT Seminole Hard Rock ‘N’ Roll Poker Open Main Event in Hollywood, Florida. Heading into Day 4, Scott Levitt has an even 11 million chips to lead the remaining 15 players.
Levitt’s biggest hand of Day 3 came close to possibly being one of his last. With the board reading T-6-4-K with two spades, Michael Shanahan pushed all his chips into the middle and Levitt called. It had to have been a great feeling for Shanahan, who had pocket Fours and a flopped set, especially when Levitt showed that he had pocket Aces. But another Ace landed on the turn, giving Levitt a better set and knocking Shanahan out in 23rd place.
That 12 million-chip pot vaulted Levitt into the lead and from there, he cruised to the day’s finish.
While there are very few players who enter Day 4 in really bad shape, Levitt also stands alone at the top. After him, the largest chip stack belongs to Harout Ghazarian, who has 6.915 million. Close behind is Joseph Cheong with 6.820 million.
Nobody at Levitt’s table has more than 4.5 million, so he may be able to swing his stack around a bit. And of the eight players, five have below 3 million chips. The other table, the one both Ghazarian and Cheong will inhabit on Tuesday, has just seven total players. One player has over 5 million, while two others have over 4 million.
Regardless of who emerges with all the chips, we know we will have a new WPT champion, as Pavel Plesuv was eliminated in 16th place, the last former WPT champ to bow out of the tournament.
The entire 2021 Seminole Hard Rock Rock ‘N’ Roll Poker Open got started on November 17 with the first of over 30 events and it showing that people have really missed live tournament poker during the pandemic. The very first event, $400 Deep Stack No-Limit Hold’em drew 6,196 entries across eight starting flights, making it the largest live poker tournament ever held in the state of Florida. The previous record was 5,018 at the 2016 Seminole Hard Rock 2021 Rock ‘N’ Roll Poker Open.
The 1,566 entries for the Main Event is the most that tourney has ever seen. Its guaranteed prize pool was $2 million, but that was a pittance compared to the more than $5 million prize pool the entries generated.
2021 WPT Seminole Hard Rock ‘N’ Roll Poker Open Main Event – Day 3 Chip Leaders
- Scott Levitt – 11,000,000
- Harout Ghazarian – 6,915,000
- Joseph Cheong – 6,820,000
- Daniel Rezaei – 5,485,000
- Selahaddin Bedir – 4,690,000
- Gediminas Uselis – 4,470,000
- Jakob Miegel – 4,410,000
- Jacob Ferro – 4,150,000
- Anshul Rai – 2,665,000
- Ari Dinov – 2,430,000
