American Ryan Hefter is the fourth gold bracelet winner at this year’s edition of the WSOP Europe. The player emerged victorious in the €1,650 Monster Stack No-Limit Hold’em last night to collect his first-ever WSOP piece and €176,205 in prize money.
A total of 580 hopefuls took part in the Monster Stack event. They created a prize pool of €843,900 and the top 63 players received a share of the money. Payouts started from €2,785. It took three days before the name of the champion was announced. Day 3 of the event saw 22 players returning to set the final table. It was reached in Level 27 and Henrik Hecklen started play as the chip leader with 1,450,000 in chips. Hefter was fifth in chips at the beginning.
After several hours of play it became clear that the eventual champion would have to face heads-up Gilbert Diaz from France. The match started in Level 33 with Hefter as the chip leader. It only took him several hands to defeat Diaz.
On what turned out to be the last hand for the evening and the tournament as a whole, Hefter went all in with [8s][7c] against his opponent’s [Ad][Jh]. The board ran out [9d][7d][2d][3s][2h], securing Hefter with pocket sevens and the gold bracelet. As for Diaz, he received €109,625 for his runner-up finish.
Carlos Chang from Taiwan took 3rd place in the tournament for a payout of €80,170. Henrik Hecklen from Denmark finished 4th to collect €59,495 of the entire prize pool. Diego Ventura from Peru received €44,725 for finishing 5th in the event.
Armin Eckl from Germany finished 6th for €34,180. Fellow German Justin Frolian took 7th place and scooped €26,415 of the prize pool. British player Richard Sheils was paid €20,675 for his 8th place in the tournament. Rounding out the official final table, David Peters from the Untied States finished 9th in the Monster Stack event to collect a payout of €16,455 for his efforts.
With Event #4 in the schedule of this year’s WSOP Europe, there are six more gold bracelets up for grabs. One of the world’s most prestigious poker festivals is to run through October 24 with the €10,450 Main Event scheduled to kick off on October 18.
