2024 Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open
Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino
Hollywood, Florida
Event 42
$5,300 SHRPO Championship
$3,000,000 Guaranteed
Entries:  865
Prize Pool:  $4,195,250
August 9-13, 2024

Paul Snead is no stranger to success at Seminole Hard Rock properties all over the state of Florida between here at Hollywood and Tampa. Snead has multiple major tournament titles on his Seminole Hard Rock resume thanks to wins in the 2019 Seminole Showdown $5,000 NLH event, the 2022 Seminole Tampa Poker Classic $2,500 Championship, and the 2024 Seminole Tampa Poker Classic $1,700 Championship. He added even more hardware to that trophy case tonight by taking down the victory in the SHRPO $5,300 buy-in Championship Event. We caught up with him after the win for an interview about his most recent achievement in the Sunshine State.

“It feels amazing, I just feel like the Hard Rock is my home turf now. I’m originally from New York and still live there and Florida now. Foxwoods used to be my home turf, but now I totally feel comfortable here and playing here. I love the way that they run tournament here, it’s just great,” said Snead right after winning the trophy.

Snead continued, “I just love playing, and this is what I do when I’m not trading. I take it very seriously, I spend a lot of time talking poker with my poker coach and you wouldn’t believe the amount of time we spend talking about things, and it’s great when it all comes together. And I ran really good this tournament I think, which you need to do.”

Speaking more on that rungood that sent him down the path to the top of this tournament field Snead also added, “I was all in for my tournament life twice yesterday. I won a huge race with Ace-King against Queens, and then I came from behind all-in against Clemen [Deng] post-flop with Queens against Jack-10 on a Jack-10 flop. Those were the two hands where I could have been out of the tournament but I won. That hasn’t happened to me, so I feel really good … I’m ready to go hit the PokerGo studio for sure.”

Snead’s profession as he mentioned is working as a trader back in New York, but poker has become a serious and profitable hobby to him over the years. His close to $2.3 million in tournament earnings tells that story with a run of great results. We asked him about how those two major pursuits in his life are mutually beneficial to each other, and below is his response.

“Absolutely, you have to be analytical on both fronts, you have to have patience, you have to have discipline, and that’s the most important one. And that’s something I’ve had to work on in my poker game over the years. I’ve been playing for over 20 years now on a higher level, and the discipline part … and when I say discipline I mean keeping my emotions in check. Because people that know me will tell you that I wear it on my sleeve a lot of the time. And you can’t do that when you’re playing poker against the best players in the world. So that’s something that I’ve worked on, and I think that I’m much better at now and it’s served me,” said Snead.

We finished the final table-side chat with an inquiry to see what celebration plans Snead and his friends along the rail had in store for later. Snead responded, “I’ve got a bunch of local friends here. We’re usually up in New York this time of year so unfortunately my wife isn’t here. But I will see her tomorrow and we will celebrate with friends and family. I’m pretty amped about that trophy, it’s a good one.”

*denotes heads-up deal