2024 Tampa Signature Poker Series Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Tampa, Florida Event 10 $400 Five-Card Pot-Limit Omaha (Re-Entry) Entries: 78 Prize Pool: $26,130 September 21, 2023
2024 Tampa Signature Poker Series Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Tampa, Florida Event 10 $400 Five-Card Pot-Limit Omaha (Re-Entry) Entries: 78 Prize Pool: $26,130 September 21, 2023
Registration closed for the $400 Five-Card Pot-Limit Omaha tournament with 78 entries creating a prize pool worth $26,130. The last ten players will be paid with $800 for a min-cash and $8,010 awaiting the Event 10 champ.
$400 Five-Card Pot-Limit Omaha (Re-Entry) Structure Level 6: 400/800 with a 800 ante Entries: 60
Clyde Maliauka
The midpoint of the schedule, the tenth tournament of 21 in 21 days, the $400 Five-Card PLO tournament, has a great group of 60 entries after the first break, and our players continue to show love to the Omaha variant.
Among the field today, Ramses Rosa and Clyde Maliauka are trying to win some cash and hardware while moving themselves up the SPS Leadboard standings. Rosa sits in fourth place thanks to a win in the $400 Limit Omaha 8 plus some cashes and Clyde Maliauka is trying to move into the top ten with another good showing.
$400 Five-Card Pot-Limit Omaha (Re-Entry) Structure Level 1: 100/200 with a 200 ante
The last trophy event on the busy Saturday schedule is a little more Omaha with one more hole card. Event 10 is a $400 buy-in Five-Card PLO tournament that will juice up the action.
Players start with 25K in their stacks and all levels last 30 minutes for the one-day tournament. Late registration and unlimited re-entries are available until the start of Level 9 at 4:30 pm.
Players begin with 25,000 in chips
Levels last 30 minutes
Late registration/re-entry available until start of Level 9 (4:30pm)
This is a one-day tournament and plays to completion
2023 Tampa Signature Poker Series Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Tampa, Florida Event 10 $600 Deep Stack NLH (Re-Entry) $30,000 Guaranteed Entries: 90 Prize Pool: $47,250 September 11, 2023
Shane Melert
Shane Melert decided to a chop at the start of heads-up play tonight with Liam Higgins to take home the top prize worth $13,180 along with the SPS guitar pick trophy at Seminole Hard Rock Tampa. His career earnings are now above $250,000, and this was his third tournament victory.
We caught up with Melert shorty after the win for an interview, and here is what he had to say about claiming the victory, “It feels great, I’ve been running pretty bad lately, and complaining about not having a trophy. So this is cool, I ran good tonight and got a trophy.”
He continued, “It wasn’t for a ton of money, but it was good enough to freeroll the rest of the series. So everything can be pleasant the rest of the way [laughs]. I will be playing them all except for maybe the $3,500. I don’t know how many players will be in it.”
“I play a lot online, so it has been nice to play at a table with humans. I live 20 minutes away so that’s nice, and the competition is awesome and it’s fun. Getting to compete in real life is a lot more fun than sitting in my bedroom alone. I get to see a lot of friends, and I get to make a small community. I think a lot people kind of know me, and I have like a group chat with of a lot of nerds. None of them talk to people, and no one knows who they are, but then I’m like I have this friend, I have this friend, and this friend at the casino. It’s cool to just have people that I see when I’m here. People are like oh no Shane’s coming, but sometimes they’re like at least he’s fun,” said Melert about his experience in the tournament today with the social aspect of poker. And indeed poker is supposed to be fun, it’s a social game, because otherwise why are any of us here in the first place other than money and the thirst for competition?
“It was pretty much just up, I never really took a hit where I lost a big all in. The biggest one was to Wally [Maddah], but it was the first hand of the final table. UTG opened, and Wally jammed with 13 bigs. I was the big blind with A-K, me and UTG were the two biggest stacks so it was actually a weird spot but he folded. Wally had A-Q, but he hit two queens. That was for 150k, and that was my biggest beat, but I ran pretty good,” said Melert when he was asked about any setbacks he had to overcome on the path to victory.
His most pivotal hand at the final table was the hand that led to the chop heads-up. “That final one is probably the biggest, I played a lot of small hands, but that one against Scooter was for a couple 100k and that got us the deal. It was J-9 versus 7-8 on an 8-7-5 flop with a Jack turn. He floated the flop a little, and then hit top pair and called off. But other than that all the pots were 100k, they were all tiny, tiny pots,” said Melert. He hit a lot of singles and doubles around the base path to victory tonight, and Melert appreciated the metaphor at the end of the interview. “A lot of singles and doubles, yeah, that’s a good analogy [laughs].”
Final Results:
1st: Shane Melert – $13,180 + SPS Trophy 2nd: Liam Higgins – $10,790 3rd: Scott “Scooter” Nichols – $5,670 4th: Wally Maddah – $3,660 5th: Dana Caruso – $2,840 6th: Jamison Alford – $2,240 7th: Tom Nguyen – $1,890 8th: Paul Strandquist – $1,650 9th: Ashraf Chehata – ($1,500) 10: John Colucci – $1,370 11: Gabriel Fuller – $1,280 12: Carlos Loving – $1,180
$600 Deep Stack NLH (Re-Entry) $30,000 Guaranteed | Structure Level 17: 5,000/10,000 with a 10,000 ante Players Remaining: 1 of 90
Scott Nichols fell in third place, good for $5,670 after he shoved short with J-9 on the turn against the 8-7 of Shane Melert with the final board reading 8-7-5-J. Nichols was eliminated in third place after the river bricked, good for $5,670.
That gave Melert 1.64 million at the start of heads-up play against the stack of 1.06 million held by Liam Higgins.
The final two players then decided to chop things up with $13,180 and the SPS trophy going to Melert, and Higgins taking home $10,790.
Stay tuned for the winner’s photo and the interview with our new champion.
$600 Deep Stack NLH (Re-Entry) $30,000 Guaranteed | Structure Level 17: 5,000/10,000 with a 10,000 ante Players Remaining: 3 of 90
Wally Maddah
Wally Maddah recently busted out in fourth place for $3,660 for his 100th cash here at Seminole Hard Rock Tampa (above is a photo from one of his most recent wins here from 2022).
Maddah holds more than $700,000 in career earnings, with over 350 cashes on his poker resume. He has won 16 poker tournaments, and the majority of those victories have come here in Tampa. The largest cash for the tournament grinder was for $37,361 at the Rock-N-Roll Poker Open at Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood back in 2016.
Current chip counts for the remaining three players:
