Event #5

The Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino hosted its second Charity Series of Poker event and continued the great sophomore year for the CSOP. The tournament drew 232 entries to raise more than $33,000 to support Habitat for Humanity International and Habitat for Humanity of Broward County. It was a great event with Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino going above and beyond to support the effort.

Players were treated to a two-hour Kickoff Party at the L Bar before moving things to the ballroom for some entertaining poker. The re-entries were flying with CSOP offering up a $1,000 bonus prize for both the player with the most re-entries and the player with the chip lead when registration closed. Matt Stout and Mike Leah chopped up the most re-entry bonus with Shannon Shorr picking up the chip leader money.

Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino put up more than $27,000 in added prizes on top of the money generated from buy-ins. The prizes included an entry into the 2015 Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open $5,000,000 Championship, a week-long poker package to Hard Rock Punta Cana, along with trips and other prizes.

The tournament attracted Hollywood stars Mehki Phifer, Omar Benson Miller, Jennifer Tilly, and Sasha Barrese along with top poker names Phil Laak, Scotty Nguyen, Will “The Thrill” Failla, Anthony Zinno, Shannon Shorr, and Matt Affleck.

The tournament quickly played down to the final table and we almost had our first CSOP two-time winner. Poker pro Nick Yunis won the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open CSOP event last year but had to settle for a second-place result this time around. David Somers took home this year’s SHRPO CSOP title along with a whopping $9,373 and a $5,250 SHRPO Championship seat.

Ken “Teach” Aldridge, Eddy Sabat, and Jessica Dawley were among those to make the final table with Joe Serock, Scott Efron, and Melissa Castello also earning some cash.