Joe McKeehen Wins SHRPO Championship for $462,600
He outlasted David Greufe after a long heads-up swing, and the final table paid out more than $3.2 million.
Joe McKeehen won the 2026 Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open Championship, the $5,300 flagship event in Hollywood, Florida, for $462,600 and the SHRPO Guitar Tower trophy after beating David Greufe heads-up.
As reported in the earlier update, McKeehen had already doubled through Artem Metalidi in the Championship. The Championship ran August 7-11 as the 43rd event of the series, drew 673 entries, and built a $3,262,704 prize pool with 85 players paid.
The final table began with Greufe leading on 130 big blinds, Loni Hui on 108, and McKeehen third with 59. Hui grabbed early momentum by taking three of the first four knockouts, while McKeehen said the table draw and chip distribution were awkward and that he did very little until five-handed, when he caught a bluff for a big pot.
Heads-up turned into a long, swingy match. The official recap said the duel lasted more than three hours and saw McKeehen build an early 20-to-1 lead, only for Greufe to surge back and even leave McKeehen at nine big blinds before the comeback flipped again. The pair agreed to an ICM chop first, then kept playing for an extra $40,000 and the trophy, and McKeehen finished it with a pair of queens.
Loni Hui finished third for $250,000, Eddie Pak took fourth for $188,000, and Frankie Rivera was fifth for $142,000. The results list also showed Jose Nadal seventh for $83,000, Robert-Andrei Burlacu eighth for $65,000, and Darren Rabinowitz ninth for $51,000. One local report put McKeehen’s biggest comeback at 11-1 down, but the official recap framed it as a sequence of repeated chip swings. The win pushed his live tournament earnings past $22 million.
