Event 7 Flight D: Tale of Two Champs

$570 Deep Stack NL Hold’em (Re-Entry)
Level 7: 250/500 with a 75 ante
Flight D Entries: 94

Michael Laake (left) and Vitor Coelho (right)

The tournament clock continues to click towards triple digit entries and we should get to 100 before registration closes at 10:30.

Two former SHRP champs are sitting side-by-side at the front of the room and won’t be moving anytime soon. Vitol Coelho won his sole SHRP trophy this past spring when he took down the 2,692-entry opening event of the WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown.

Seminole Hard Rock team member Michael Laake has seven SHRP trophies from around the state. His last came during the same series as Coelho’s when he won the $1,100 Six-Max event. But on the Winter Poker Open side, Laake is our defending champion in this tournament when he was the last player standing among 633 other competitors.

Those two players are responsible for nearly $2 million in career earnings and will be two tough seats for the rest of the table to get through.