Nancy Matson had a little dream of cracking GPI’s top 100 women, but she ended up with much more – gold ring and a five-figure payout
Nancy Matson, a Los Angeles-based video editor by the day, topped last night the 159-person field of the WSOP Circuit Bicycle Casino $1,125 No-Limit Hold’em for her career’s second largest five-figure cash and her first gold ring from the series.
The player had one specific goal when she entered the tournament – to collect some points that would help her enter top 100 of the GPI women’s ranking. At the end of it all, she did much better, ending up with the title.
The event played over two days and as mentioned earlier, it attracted 159 entrants who wanted to take a shot at the title and the first-place cash. They generated a prize pool of $159,000 which was split into payouts for the top 18 finishers, min-cashes starting from $2,130.
Day 1 of the event wrapped up with the lucky 18 hopefuls who were to receive a share of the prize pool. As Matson herself said in her post-victory interview, she ended the day with an OK stack and did somewhat well throughout Day 2. Then, when the final table was set, she started picking up some chips and gaining some momentum and confidence.
The player said she felt as the dark horse. Nobody really knew her, while there were some WSOP Circuit regulars at the table. She said that her being the least known player among the final nine actually helped her, because her competitors could not always read her bluffs.
Final Table and Two-Handed Finale
Matson was about mid-stacked when the unofficial final table was set. As mentioned above, she started picking up pace when there were nine players left and kept that momentum until the end of the tournament.
Former gold ring winner Todd Rebello was the player whom Matson faced heads-up. Rebello won his first gold piece from the series back in 2008. He topped the field of a $300 buy-in tournament at Caesars Atlantic City for his piece of WSOP Circuit paraphernalia. However, the $1,125 No-Limit Hold’em that was completed last night at the Bicycle Casino in the Los Angeles area was not his take down.
Rebello had to settle for the $26,530 payout he received for running deep in the event and finishing runner-up to Matson.
The eventual winner told WSOP Circuit staff that that was probably her last $1K tournament of the year. Matson said it was a little dream of hers to crack GPI’s top 100 women. The player thus did not play for a win as much as she was trying to collect as many points as possible to make her little dream come true. She will now sit and wait to see how what is left of the year will go for the other poker playing women around the world and to hope for the happy outcome of her still being among GPI’s top 100 when 2018 is over.
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