Farid Jattin has won the 2023 Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open Championship in Hollywood, Florida, earning one of the largest paydays of his poker career after a four-way deal brought an end to the 2023 SHRPO's largest event. Jattin, a native of Columbia who now resides in Miami, collected $655,000 as part of the four-way chop, while Shannon Shorr, Omer Rotman, and Kitty Kuo also walked away with more than $480,000 each.
Jattin topped a 1,070-entry field to take down the $5,300 SHRPO Championship on Tuesday. The event offered a $3 million guarantee but easily topped that mark, eventually paying out $5,189,500 to the top 134 finishers.
The winner's payday pushed Jattin's lifetime tournament winnings over $8 million. Though the $655,000 cash is Jattin's second-largest for winning a major event, his largest payday came in 2019, when he earned a career-best $746,000 in the $25,000 PokerStars Players Championship (PSPC) in the Bahamas.
Jattin told veteran SHRPO reporter Allen "AlCantHang" Rash that the win was the biggest result he'd posted since spending a couple of months in Italy in the spring honeymooning after getting married. Jattin, who remains Columbia's lifetime tournament-winnings leader, also said that he likes to take three months a year away from the game.
“I think the moment I stopped defining my life by poker results, the results started coming by nature,” Jattin, told SHRPO's Rash. “I’m playing for my family now — for my wife, for my brother, for my parents. I’m very thankful for poker, but eventually you’ve got to disconnect.”
Big names post wins throughout series
The SHRPO series annually draws a large number of accomplished pros to South Florida. Over this year's 14-day, 54-event run, the SHRPO paid out $18,292,375 in prize money, more than doubling its pre-series guarantee of $8.91 million.
Jattin's win highlighted what the SHRPO frames as a "Big 4" of prominent events within the series. Other Big 4 event winners included Aaron Mermelstein in the $25K NLH high-roller (the second time Mermelstein's won the event), Dan Sepiol in the $2,700 NLH Deep Stack, and former WPT Showdown champion James Carroll in the $1,100 NLH Deep Stack.
Two players were double trophy winners in the series. Anthony Zinno collected $1,100 Pot-Limit Omaha 8 and $1,100 Mixed PLO trophies, and Sam Sternfield won the $600 Six-Max PLO and the $2,700 Eight-Game Mix tournaments.
Shaun Deeb continued his torrid 2023 by taking down the other high-roller on the slate, the $25K PLO event, and David Shmuel won a $600 Big O title early in the series for his eighth career SHRPO win. Shmuel moved into a tie with John Holley and Yuval Bronshtein for third on SHRPO's career-wins leaderbord, behind Raminder Singh's ten wins and Michael Newman's nine.
A complete listing of all winners from the 2023 Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open has been posted as well.
Featured image source: Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood / AlCantHang
