Hollywood Poker Open, Season 3 features more regional stops, $2 million expected Las Vegas Championship prize pool

WYOMISSING -- More stops, more players and more winnings can be expected from Penn National Gaming's 2014-15 Hollywood Poker Open tournament series, which kicks off this Fall with the first HPO Regional tournament series at the Hollywood Casino Lawrenceburg, Nov. 13-23.

This season, poker players from across the world will compete for big money prize pools from November through May at eight HPO Regional tournament series locations with Hollywood Casino Toledo added to the schedule.

Promotions will be planned to target the Regional locations as well as the Championship this season. In the past two seasons, Penn Gaming properties across the nation sent more than 200 "seat winners" to the Championship in Las Vegas at the M Resort. "We plan to not only give away hundreds of seats to the Championship again, but we will also implement similar seat winner promotions to the Regional tournament series as well. These HPO tournament fields are such a great mix of traveling poker professionals and local promotion winners which makes the tournaments really attractive to all levels of poker players," said Tournament Director Bill Bruce.

Earlier this summer, Simon Deadman of the UK outplayed nearly 700 other players from 44 U.S. states and five countries over three-days at the M Spa Resort Casino in Las Vegas to pocket more than $350,000 as the winner of the Hollywood Poker Open Season 2 Championship. The Championship had a prize pool of more than $1,500,000.

Ranked poker pros and rising stars showed up in huge numbers to support the second annual HPO Championship. Chris Demaci (10th), Brian Hastings (11th), Andrew Spears (21st) Tripp Kirk (30th), Andrew Lichtenberger (32nd), Greg Ostrander (50th), Michael Katz (55th), Dennis Phillips, Liv Boree, Tony Dunst, Carlos Mortensen, Dylan Wilkerson, James Carroll, Kevin Stammen, Shannon Shorr, Jonathan Little, Lee Childs, David Tuthill, John Dolan, David Nicholson, Owen Crowe, Rex Clinkscales, Ryan Tepen, Chance Kornuth, Joe Kuether, Max Greenwood, Lauren Kling, Jack Salter, Ravi Raghavan, Calvin Andersen, Jared Jaffee, Aaron Massey, Justin Young, Kevin MacPhee, Isaac Baron, John Land, Seneca Easley, Ben Palmer, Ben Zamani, Daryl Fish, James Carroll, Amit Makhija, Jesse Sylvia, Zal Irani, Jeff Fielder, Galen Hall, Louis Salter, Jarod Ludemann, Steve Brecher, Wil Givens, Christopher Day, Benjamin Volpe, Jordan Morgan, and Burt Boutin were all part of the field.

For the second straight year, the guaranteed prize pool of $500,000 doubled in size, this time rising to over $1,500,000. The Season 3 Championship will once again have a $500,000 guarantee prize pool, but it is more of a footnote as players and organizers alike have reason to believe this season's prize pool will top $2,000,000.