Did the Hard Rock Poker Open redefine tournament poker?

Last year it was The Big One for One Drop $1,000,000 buy-in tournament at the World Series of Poker that tested the limits of what was possible in poker. This year it is the $5,000 buy-in, $10 million guarantee, Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open that is doing the same; pushing the bounds of what is possible with a little creativity and a lot of cajones.

So how do you make just another tournament in a sea of poker tournaments stand out? The Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open may just have rewritten the playbook on precisely how to accomplish this feat: First you slap a $10 million guarantee on the Main Event (a $5,000 buy-in event) and then you advertise the tournament months in advance. Obviously not a recipe for the faint of heart; especially the $10 million guarantee bit.

But the tournament organizers were rewarded for their “if you slap a massive guarantee on the tournament they will come” mentality with 634 players on Day 1a, 690 players on Day 1b, and 1,060 entrants on Day 1c. The final tally of 2,384 is something that few people felt was possible in today’s poker world, and even fewer that it could be pulled off in a random casino in Hollywood, Florida.

The ambitious attempt by the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open taking place in Hollywood, Florida seems to have paid off in a big way considering the Main Event not only met its immense $10 million guarantee, but the publicity the tournament has received, and the number of top poker pros who made their way to Florida for the tournament is practically unprecedented. I mean, we are talking about a $5,000 tournament with 2,200 entries and a total prize-pool of $12 million!

Personally I love everything about this event.

I love the way they utilized the newer trends in poker like reentries and guaranteed prize-pools –a concept live events were late to the party on.

I love the way they ran the three starting flights on a Thursday, Friday and Saturday, allowing amateur players the opportunity to play without taking a week off from work to see if they made Day 3.

I love that they have been hyping this tournament for months, giving pros the chance to plan their trip and locals the chance to satellite their way into the field.

But most of all I love the ambitious guarantee the tournament chose. $10 million appeals to everyone. It appeals to poker pros, but it also appeals to amateurs. It’s a number that screams potential overlay, but at the same time a massive field that will push the prize-pool well beyond the guarantee.

These are the types of tournaments poker needs, not the cookie-cutter WPT and EPT tournaments, or the fundamentally similar tournaments of the WSOPC, HPT, or any other mid-stakes poker tour’s acronym you’d like to put here.

If more tournament organizers had the vision and the balls to attempt what the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open just pulled-off the tournament poker world would be in a much better place than it is. This event attracted everybody: Poker pros; semi-pro and amateur players; locals; and virtually the entire ensemble of poker media… For all intents and purposes, the SHRPO is being covered like it’s the WSOP Main Event.