Stop two of the tour has officially come to a close as of 5:30am EST on Tuesday morning. To say the days were tedious would certainly be an understatement, but it comes with the territory. I was lucky enough to arrive in the city a few days early to visit my sisters, who both reside in Philadelphia.

As for the tournament, Parx Casino is one of my favorite properties to play at, but one of my least favorite places to shoot. Between the dim lights, and dark red walls, the options for shooting natural light are essentially non-existent, even with how well modern day cameras shoot in low light. I shot about 5 photos on 160 ISO, using my 70-200 2.8, and they looked atrocious. Luckily it wasn't my first time shooting in this room, so I planned ahead of time to bring some lighting with me. The room itself is big, with large columns throughout the poker room, making it difficult to bounce the lighting as I usually would. After some trouble shooting, I opted to blast one light off the ceiling and move it accordingly. Definitely some extra work, but if it was easy everyone would be doing it.

Aside from the long days the tournament itself was great. I was fortunate enough to watch three of my buddies all make the final table and finish in the top four, earning over $100,000 each!

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This was one of the first images I shot, no lighting. While it may look decent at a small size below you will see how its soft and grainy. Also shooting on a lower shutter speed (down to 1/60th) there is a fair amount of blur anytime the players move.

So to the lighting we go! Below are some of my favorite images from the event. Majority were shot using one strobe, but occasionally I'd turn on the second and try to shoot a little outside of the box!

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WPTDeepStacks_Alex Rocha_Amato_AA46946.jpg

WPTDeepStacks_Mike Dentale_Amato_AA47025.jpg

WPTDeepStacks_Phil Hui_Amato_AA47061.jpg

WPTDeepStacks_Tarun Gulati_Amato_AA47203.jpg

WPTDeepStacks_Justin Liberto_Amato_AA47291.jpg

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WPTDeepStacks_Jimmy Poper Wins WPTDS Big Stax XX_Amato_AA47347.jpg

WPTDeepStacks_Phil Hui_Amato_AA46959.jpg

Overall I'm pretty happy with how everything turned out! For now I'm back in LA, hanging out for the week. Looking forward to watching UFC 209 this weekend, as well as the Thurman Garcia fight, and then its off the Jacksonville on Thursday for WPTDS Jax at bestbet!