In addition to the $10 million guaranteed Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open Main Event that will play down to a champion on Wednesday, the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Florida held a $100,000 Super High Roller tournament. While there haven’t been any controversies in the Main Event, the Super High Roller was marred by a payout controversy.

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The controversy began on Monday with only nine players putting up a $100,000 buy-in to build a prize pool of $877,500. As the tournament offered late registration and a re-entry option, there wasn’t a set payout structure announced.

In the middle of the event, however, Seminole officials stated that if the field were under 10 entries, two players would be paid out. They also said that instead of playing through to a champion, the action would be halted for the day once five players remained to allow for streaming of the final table by PokerStars.tv.

This didn’t seem to sit well with the chip leader at the time, Scott Seiver (pictured above), who argued for a 70/30 split of the prize money instead of the stated 65/35. The situation escalated once five players remained when Seminole officials announced that three players would be receiving a payout. According to Jason Mo, who was among those five players remaining, this is where the story took an intriguing turn.

Writing in a post on TwoPlusTwo, Mo recounted, “After we get down to five and bag and tag, the floor comes back and says that three people pay according to their structure sheet. Before this point, I assumed this was correct since nothing was set in stone before because the registration and rebuy period was still open. The floor insists that it’s three, Scott starts yelling and threatening the floor, and the rest of the players leave.”

Mo continued, “An hour later after Scott was left alone with the floor, they changed their decision and paid two. I ask them about this later, they said they didn’t change based on Scott’s complaining, which I believe to be a complete lie. Scott basically got the tournament floor to change the payouts mid-tournament to make them more top-heavy, adding about $70,000 in ICM value to his stack.”

Seiver put his side of the story in the same thread. After talking with another player, Dan Perper, and learning that there wasn’t a payout schedule prior to the start of the event, Seiver brought the issue up. A floorman admitted discussing the payout percentages for two players and, after hearing Seiver’s arguments, the floorman said the casino wouldn’t deviate from the 65/35 split.

“We continue to play poker and are told we will stop play for the day whenever we reach five players so there is a live stream the next day,” Seiver said in his post. “We hit five players about 15 minutes into Level 5. When we do, the TD’s boss, the head of tournaments, comes into the room with bags for us and as he puts the bags down says, ‘By the way, there was a mistake… We said the wrong information we are now paying three spots.'”

Seiver once again voiced his displeasure with this to Seminole officials. “I was upset, as was Dan, as this is a terrible precedent for tournament poker to set where over halfway through a tournament a stated and announced setting of the tournament is changed.”

After almost an hour of discussion, Seminole officials decided to revert to the two players paid format, which failed to settle the issue among the remaining five players. In the end, Seminole officials stuck to paying two players, but added a $50,000 payout to whomever finished in third place.

According to reports from the Seminole Hard Rock floor, that third place finisher was ironically Seiver. After getting his final chips in against Ryan Fee with an A-Q against Fee’s A-8, Fee was able to make two pair on a J-6-10-A-8 board to eliminate Seiver. Fee would fall as the runner-up in the tournament to Jake Schindler.

What do you make of the controversy? Comment here and let us know.

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