2018 Rock ‘N’ Roll Poker Open 
Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino 
Hollywood, Florida
Event 12
$3,500 WPT RRPO Championship (Re-Entry)
$2,000,000 Guaranteed
Entries: 898
Prize Pool: $2,873,600
November 23-28, 2018 

The World Poker Tour came to South Florida this weekend for the 2018 Seminole Hard Rock “Rock ‘N’ Roll Poker Open” Championship, a first time for this November series. The Championship had a $2 Million Guarantee which was easily surpassed and the top prize was over $500,000.

After two starting flights, three play down days, and a tough final table, the Czech Republic’s Pavel Plesuv defeated Jim Gilbert heads-up to put his name on the WPT Champions Cup.

The $3,500 buy-in tournament drew 898 entries for the biggest RRPO Championship field in Seminole Hard Rock history. They created a prize pool worth $2,873,600 and the last 113 spots were paid when they hit the money late on Day 2. Five of our former RRPO champions made it through to Day 2 including defending champ Michael Newman.

We had 52 players move on to Day 3 and Plesuv was not among the leaders. That would change as they progressed and he was fourth of 14 returning for Day 4 to play down to the WPT live-streamed final table. When the dust settled, Plesuv took his seat on the last day with the biggest stack.

The final table had an international flavor with two coming from Europe and another from South Korea. Ravi Raghavan was the only member with his name on the WPT Champions Cup but he was unable to run up his short stack. Chris Kennedy followed shortly after in fifth place and the last four settled in for a long grind.

Austria’s Marius Gierse went out in fourth place and Jeremy Joseph’s exit in third set the heads-up battle. Gilbert faced nearly a six-to-one deficit, doubled up twice, but he was unable to come back.

Gilbert, a Philadephia-based pro, earned $326,565 for his runner-up finish and Plesuv took home $504,820 for the win plus a seat into the WPT Tournament of Champions.

This win pushed Plesuv’s career earnings over $4,000,000 with half of it coming in 2018. He earned $925,000 for a second place finish at the partypoker Millions in Germany and another $640,000 for a win in the MSPT Las Vegas Main Event this summer. Also, this was not the first time Plesuv was heads-up for a WPT title with the lead.

“I was heads-up in WPT Prague three years ago with a big chip lead,” Plesuv said. “I lost. So I’m really excited to come back and win.”

This was Plesuv’s first trek to South Florida for our series but it will not be the last.

“The tournament was great,” Plesuv said. “I really liked the structure, the field was big and it had great organization. The property is great too.”

Congratulations to Pavel on his WPT RRPO Championship win and a huge thanks to our players for another successful series.

Final table results:

1st: Pavel Plesuv – $504,820
2nd: Jim Gilbert – $326,565
3rd: Jeremy Joseph – $240,945
4th: Marius Gierse – $179,710
5th: Chris Kennedy – $135,505
6th: Ravi Raghavan – $103,310

• Download: Final Results (PDF)