Matt Culberson is the big winner of the Heartland Poker Tour, held earlier this week at the Ameristar Casino Resort Spa in St. Charles, Missouri. He defeated Michael Ross, a 38-year-old professional poker player from Chicago, Illinois, in a nerve-racking nationally televised final table play. Initially, Culberson had a chip advantage of 4:1 over his opponent. Ross, however, managed to cut the deficit and to even the stacks, but not for long. Eventually, his queens could not beat up Culberson’s pocket aces. Ross was awarded $78,350 for his second place in the tournament.
Carl Masters, a junk dealer from Tennessee, was also defeated by Matt Culberson. Similarly to Ross, he had excellent chances for a better result, but in the end his 99 could not stand a chance against Culberson’s QQ and he finished eighth. He came into possession of the total sum of $15,067.
The final table also seated Reginald Roberts, a regular HPT participant and two-time champion of the tournament. This time, however, he was ousted to sixth position by the current winner. Culberson also needed to eliminate Jeffrey Brin, owner of a carpet store in Olathe, Kansas, in order to be able to face Ross for the final deal. Brin took third place and was sent home with $52,466 of the total prize pool in his pockets.
Apart from being an ardent poker player, Culberson is a baseball coach in Missouri. He won the total sum of $129,147 for his impressive performance at the Heartland Poker Tour and this has been his first win in four years. In fact, he even did not attend any poker tournaments throughout this period of time. One of his former significant achievements is his gold ring from the World Series of Poker Circuit.
Culberson described his style in an interview from 2008 as extremely aggressive. He also shared that he was a great fan of Canadian poker star Daniel Negreanu as well as his style and the cheerfulness he demonstrated while playing. The baseball instructor even tried to adopt his approach and apply it while at the poker table.
Culberson qualified for HPT via a satellite that cost him $375. Little did he know that this relatively small investment would bring him such a major success.
The buy-in fee for the series was $1,650 and 383 players, mostly from Missouri and the neighboring states, took part in it. The considerable number of participants resulted in the creation of the impressive prize pool of $538,115. The money was distributed between 36 players.
The next stage of the Heartland Poker Tour will be held in Las Vegas. The Stratosphere Casino Hotel and Tower will accommodate the ten-day event between November 7 and 16.
