In Pensacola, the yearlong build toward Player of the Year wrapped up at the end of January. Throughout the year, Pensacola Greyhound Track tournament players stacked up points as well as pots in their monthly events to try to earn a spot into the Player of the Year event.
The top 100 players qualified for a $5K freeroll, and top points-earner Mike Rea earned $5K. In the POY tournament, Tracey McKenzie came out on top, claiming an almost $20K chunk of the $67,480 prize pool, as well as the POY title.
BESTBET JAX: Tony Otts started the year right by winning bestbet Jacksonville’s $50K guarantee. The $200 event brought out 678 players and garnered a $111K prize pool. The 65-year-old retiree bested final-table regular Eddy Mroczkowski and Jose Santos.
Santos is quite the story, going from playing $1-$2 limit hold’em to cashing in final tables in only a two-month span. He credited the daily $40 NLHE tournament at bestbet for being such a great way for new tournament players to learn the ins and outs of the game.
Otts took $21K back home to Waycross, Ga. While the $50K doubled the guarantee, it’s also a fine warm-up for the WPT’s return to the First Coast. Satellites are under way for the $3,500 main event at bestbet Jacksonville with a $500K guarantee, including a massive 20-seat guarantee on March 1 as well as 10-seat guarantee on March 20.
Both of those satellites come with a $590 price tag, but there’ll be plenty of chances to win a high-hand seat into the event the week before. See bestbet Jacksonville’s website for the promotional calendar and satellite schedule or see the ad in our current issue.
DBKC: In Daytona Beach, the road to the next HPT is being built. It started with the $100 Daytona Beach Blizzard event. The blizzard was far from chilly, with 1,100 players nearly doubling the $50K guarantee. Day 2 of the event was a long one, starting in the afternoon and moving well into the night. The final four players were heavily stacked moving past the midnight hour, so a chop was worked out among James Brown, Tammy Kenny, Reggie Bautista and Steven Constantino that saw each player taking at least $11K home with Constantino getting the biggest share.
The HPT returns at the end of this month and satellites are running ($65 buy-in and a guaranteed $1,650 seat to the main event in each satellite).
— Email Charles at anteupcharles@gmail.com.
