Big Day in the Big Easy
Robert Campbell Wins Omaha High-Low Championship
New Orleans, LA (May 9, 2009) - When it comes to mouth-watering food and great live music, no city beats New Orleans. The poker action here isn't too bad either. In a sense, everyone who visits New Orleans ends up a winner.
That's a perspective shared by thousands of poker players, who come to the Crescent City each year to play in the South's most prestigious poker tournament series.
'If I enter a tournament and go deep, that's awesome,' said Jerry Siemens, a small business owner who visits New Orleans about twice per year. 'And if I bust out, then I have the rest of the night free to have a great dinner or hear the music on Bourbon Street. So, it's a win-win deal for me.'
This marks the fifth consecutive year Harrah's New Orleans has hosted a WSOP Circuit stop. The inaugural series in 2005 set several attendance records, which still stand to this day. But each and every year, the turnout for tournaments and live action has been consistently high. The poker market was so lively here two years ago that New Orleans began to host not just one, but two WSOP-related events yearly. The Winter Bayou Poker Challenge continues to be held in December. The regular Bayou Poker Challenge always takes place in May.
The Harrah's New Orleans Hotel and Casino is located in the perfect spot. It is only steps away from the famous French Quarter, with hundreds of world-class restaurants, bars, and other attractions. The Mississippi River is only a two-minute walk away. Other popular destinations within walking distance of the casino include the Audubon Nature Institute Aquarium, IMAX theatre, Steamboat Natchez Riverboat, and many other fun places. Antique 1930s-era streetcars run up and down adjacent Canal Street and run throughout the city.
The Harrah's Hotel is located directly across the street from the casino. At 26 stories high, it offers spectacular views of the New Orleans area, including water traffic floating along the Mississippi River. The 450-room luxury hotel is a AAA Four Diamond award winner and is one of the best places to stay in the city.
Inside the casino, the Harrah's New Orleans Poker Room offers 23 tables with around the clock cash-game action. Due to the large turnout for tournaments an extra 45 tables are added to the special events center, which becomes the tournament arena for the duration of the two-week series of events.
This year, the Bayou Poker Challenge instituted a number of key changes, which appear to be largely responsible for the boost in attendance. The primary changes are more tournaments, more starting chips, and more playing levels.
There are now two daily gold ring events. No-Limit Hold'em tournaments are mostly scheduled to start at noon. Other tournaments such as Omaha High-Low Split and Pot-Limit Omaha are mostly scheduled at 5 pm. This means the tournament action goes around the clock at Harrah's.
Players also get lots of added play, due to more starting chips and added levels. On average, tournament players are starting with about 40 percent more in chips than the same events held last year. Furthermore, levels have been added at key points so that increases are incremental, instead of tournaments elsewhere which drastically increase blinds and antes, making the events a crapshoot. These vital changes increase the skill factor in the tournament - yet another reason the World Series of Poker and WSOP Circuit events are the most popular events for poker players.
Robert Campbell (Miami, FL) Wins Event #2
Day one began with a bang. The first event of the 2009 Bayou Poker Challenge attracted a whopping 572 players, making it the largest turnout at Harrah's New Orleans for a World Series of Poker Circuit tournament in more than two years. In fact, the $300 buy-in No-Limit Hold'em event was the sixth-largest tournament in New Orleans history, since Harrah's began hosting major poker tournaments. Event #2 was the second of two scheduled gold ring events which began on the first day. The Omaha High-Low Split tournament started at 5 pm drew a more modest-sized field of 81 entries.
The tournament winner was Robert Campbell, a.k.a. 'RBC.' He is a 42-year-old professional poker player from Miami, FL. Campbell is originally from California.
Campbell started the final table third in chips out of the nine survivors. His main adversary was Victor Iemolo, another Floridian who ended up as the runner up. Iemolo had the chip lead when play was three-handed, but Campbell enjoyed a late flurry of cards which propelled him to victory.
Campbell is a longtime veteran of tournament poker. His first cash came back in 1993. Since then, Campbell has cashed 27 times. Most of Campbell's finishes were in lower buy-in tournaments. However, he has also previously cashed twice at the WSOP, both which occurred in Omaha High-Low Split events. Campbell now has five wins on his tournament resume, including victories at The Orleans in Las Vegas and the California State Poker Championships in Los Angeles. This was his first time to cash in New Orleans.
Campbell won first place prize money totaling $8,485. He was also presented with a gold ring, the ultimate achievement for winning a WSOP Circuit event.
The top nine finishers were as follows:
1st Place - Robert Campbell, a 42-year-old poker pro from Miami, FL won his fifth major tournament. Incredibly, all of his wins have been in Omaha High-Low Tournaments. This marked Campbell's first WSOP Circuit victory.
2nd Place - Vittario 'Victor' Iemolo was the runner up. He is a 44-year-old poker player originally from New York who now lives in Sarasota, FL. This was Iemolo's third cash in a major tournament, which includes an in-the-money finish at the 2006 WSOP.
3rd Place - Thomas Witherspoon ended up in third place. Three-handed play lasted for nearly two hours, with Witherspoon finishing as the third leg of the trifecta. Witherspoon, a dentist from Baton Rouge, LA has several previous cashes, including three in-the-money finishes at WSOP Circuit events in Tunica. He also made a final table at the Bayou Poker Challenge last year. Witherspoon won a tournament at the Scotty Nguyen Poker Challenge in 2006.
4th Place - David Moyer, an attorney from the New Orleans suburbs, took fourth place. He began play on day two as one of the larger stacks. But Moyer went card dead late and ended up disbarred from the finale. This marked Moyer's third time to cash in a major tournament. He cashed at the WSOP last year. Moyer also finished in the money in the first ever Bayou Poker Challenge, held in 2004. Moyer wanted to add that he is known as the official 'Beer Commissioner.' He can be seen online at: www.beercommissioner.com
5th Place - J.R. Hamilton was one of the final table's most interesting players. He is a clinical psychologist and doctoral student originally from Baton Rouge, LA now living in San Francisco. Hamilton's dissertation is on emotional processing, via facial and vocal responses. Hamilton's background in psychology and visual clues paid off nicely, as he made it all the way to a fifth-place finish in this tournament. Hamilton previously cashed at poker events in California and some online tournaments.
6th Place - Janie Martinez, a former senior buyer from La Porte, TX who is now retired, finished in sixth place. She started off with an average-sized stack but went out about two hours into the final table. Martinez is married and has four children. This was Martinez' first time to cash in a poker tournmanet.
7th Place - Rusty Moss, a cash game pro from Huntsville, TX locked up seventh place. Moss says he is in the midst of making a transition from playing exclusively in cash games and intends to play in more tournaments. He previously finished in the money at the Oklahoma State Poker Championship. This was Moss' first time to cash in a WSOP Circuit event.
8th Place - Ian Crozier came in as the lowest stack and went out in eighth place. He is a database specialist from Gretna, LA. This marked Crozier's first time to cash in a major tournament.
9th Place - Brad Millar survived day one and arrived at the final table with an average stack. But he ended up as the first player to bust out, resulting in a ninth-place finish. Millar is from Roseville, IL and works in sales. This was Millar's first recorded cash in a major tournament.
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