Roland Israelashvili, a three-time gold ring winner with more than $2 million in tournament winnings from both WSOP and WSOP Circuit events, has just scored another victory to add one more Circuit gold piece to his collection. Born in Georgia and now residing in Forest Hills, New York, last night, Israelashvili bested the field of Event #10 of the WSOP Circuit Bally’s for his fourth career gold ring and the amount of $41,888.
As it could be suggested, the player is both WSOP and WSOP Circuit regular. Over the years, he has cashed in as many as 50 Series events to collect a total of $1,542,362 in those. However, he has not won a gold bracelet so far. His best achievement in the Series was his fifth-place finish in the 2012 Annual WSOP $50,000 Poker Players Championship for a payout of $317,882.
As for his performance in the Circuit Series, Israelashvili has cashed in a total of 34 events, including last night’s, to collect more than half a million in those.
Event #10 or the $365 No-Limit Hold’em Monster Stack was a two-day tournament that kicked off on March 3. A massive field of 681 entries generated a prize pool of $204,300 to be distributed to the top 72 finishers. Lowest payouts amounted to $572.
By the end of Day 1, there were 48 players to bag up their chips for the night. They returned for Day 2 of the event to play down to the nine-handed final table and to a winner. The tournament’s final day started at 3 pm local time with one-time gold ring winner George Chen as the chip leader. The player had a total of 846,000. Israelashvili was tenth in chips with 377,000 at the time when cards were thrown in the air.
The official final table was reached late on Friday. Nine-handed action kicked off with Chen again holding the majority of chips in play. He had a total of 2,050,000. Israelashvili followed closely after with 1,960,000. Eventually, the two players faced each other heads-up. Although Chen was a chip leader over the day, he had to settle for the runner-up finish in the end. The player from Queens, New York received the amount of $25,915 for his performance in the tournament.
Mike Parekh from Houston, Texas finished 3rd for $19,008. Steve Enriquezgallo from Spain took 4th place for a payout of $14,136. Homan Mohammadi from Canada received $10,654 for his 5th place in the tournament.
Israelashvili and Chen were not the only former gold ring winners at the final table. Marshall White from Garner, North Carolina, who had formerly won two gold pieces, last night finished 6th in the Bally’s event to collect the amount of $8,137. Hae Jung from Pittsfield, Massachusetts scooped $6,297 of the entire prize pool for finishing 7th.
Hui Ming Zhu took 8th place, good for $4,936. Robert Goulding from Sandia Park, New Mexico rounded out the official final table for a payout of $3,918.
