It is one of the most controversial things in the poker world – the delayed final table that the World Poker Tour employs for broadcasting purposes. These tables, which feature tournaments that, in some cases, had a final table determined more than a month prior, have become a staple of the WPT roster of events. In 2025, two tournaments will face this delay, with the first, the 2025 WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown, featuring a roster of notable grinders who made the tournament’s final table earlier this week.
Final Table Determined for WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown
On Monday, the final table for the latest event on the WPT 2025 schedule, the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown at the namesake property in Hollywood, FL, was determined. The tournament is always one of the year’s biggest events, and 2025 did not disappoint. 1755 entries created a $5.6 million-plus prize pool and, by Monday afternoon, only sixteen players were left in contention.
At the start of action on Monday, the noted poker grinder Art Peacock paraded on top of the leaderboard with his 13.3 million in chips. To define “grinder,” we are using it here as talking about a player who has had some success in the world of poker, but haven’t exactly wowed the general poker fan; Peacock has done that in amassing nearly two million dollars in career tournament earnings, but he’s done it without a major championship on his resume.
Utilizing his lofty perch at the start of Monday’s Day Four play, Peacock punished the competition by more than doubling his stack by the time the final table was determined. Peacock was personally responsible for bringing the tournament to the final six, knocking out Rafael Rodriguez’s A-4 with a pocket pair of eights that ruled on the final hand. That brought Peacock to 27.15 million in chips, more than enough for the lead.
There is a quintet of players who will be looking to slow Peacock’s roll after his late-tournament domination. The person with the best chance is Daniel Marcus, like Peacock another longtime grinder in the world of poker. Marcus is closing in on $1 million in career earnings, which he will surpass once his finish is official in this tournament. Marcus has 22.15 million in chips to challenge Peacock.
Here’s how the runners will come to the post for the final table of the 2025 WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown:
Seat 1: Art Peacock, 27.15 million
Seat 2: Jeffery Fritz, 16.15 million
Seat 3: Mitchell Hynam, two million
Seat 4: Jared Hemingway, 11.15 million
Seat 5: Daniel Marcus, 22.15 million
Seat 6: Mihai Niste, 8.65 million
All players are guaranteed $164,000 for their finish, but they are all looking up to the $776,000 payday – but that payday will not be until next month.
Are Delayed Final Tables STILL Happening?
A little history on poker’s fascination with delaying the final table.
In 2008, the World Series of Poker sought to drum up interest in the final table of the $10,000 Championship Event (the “Main Event”) by delaying the play of that final table. It wasn’t for a couple of weeks…it was for FOUR MONTHS, hence where the “November Nine” concept came from. It took almost a decade (2016) before the WSOP dropped the feature (which arguably failed), but the WPT hasn’t seemed to learn this fact.
In 2019, the WPT introduced their “delayed final table” concept with not just one but three events – the 2019 Gardens Poker Championship, the Borgata Winter Poker Open, and the L. A. Poker Classic – being delayed (they would do it with three other tournaments after this in May 2019). The Gardens tournament was postponed the longest, with over two months of a wait between the final table’s determination and the playout of the action. These “delayed” events would be played out at the WPT’s HyperX Sports Arena in Las Vegas, with an audience and taping facilities on hand.
The theory of the delayed final table for the WPT action was to draw attention to their tapings or their streaming performance, but instead it has seemed to chop interest in these tournaments to nothing. The WPT still does it, however, with two tournaments this year set to receive this treatment. The 2025 Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown will be contested on May 29, with the upcoming WPT Choctaw (to be held from May 1-5) playing their delayed final table on May 30.
Instead of having already determined a champion, the six men at the final table of the 2025 WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown will now have to wait until late May (and just before the start of the 2025 WSOP) to figure out who will be the champion. Hopefully, too much attention won’t be pulled away by the mass of humanity that will be heading to the desert for poker’s biggest tournament.
(Photo provided by World Poker Tour)
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