Mitchell Towner, a Texas-born professor at the University of Arizona, has just won the 2016 WSOP $1,500 Monster Stack No-Limit Hold’em, one of the most exciting events on the Series’ schedule. Strangely enough, the player collected his first-ever live cash and his first WSOP gold bracelet for beating a field of a little less than 7,000 entries. Towner’s share of the prize pool totaled $1,120,196. Quite a debut for a WSOP newbie!
This year’s edition of the Monster Stack tournament attracted an exact number of 6,927 entries who generated a massive prize pool of $9,351,450. The top 1040 places got paid, with payouts starting from $2,249. The event ran from June 24-28.
The Monster Stack format was introduced at the Series back in 2013 and have enjoyed quite a lot of popularity ever since. The unique structure secures entries with more chips than usual and as a result, it usually takes longer for a winner to be determined.
Day 4 of this year’s Monster Stack event started with 26 players returning to contend for the first-place prize and the gold bracelet. It took more than six and a half hours of play for the official nine-handed final table to be set. Towner entered the final table as one of the short stacks. He started nine-handed play with only 12 big blinds left.
Eventually, he managed to defeat a two-time gold bracelet winner, a four-time WSOP Circuit gold ring winner, and several opponents, who, just like him, were contending for their first WSOP-related gold piece.
Dorian Rios from Venezuela was Towner’s heads-up opponent. Given the tournament’s format, two-handed match was expected to take a while. However, in this case, heads-up battle lasted only sixteen hands.
Hand #123 was the event’s final one. Towner raised and Rios announced all in. Towner asked for a count and after 30 seconds called, tabling [Ad][7c] against his opponent’s [3c][3h]. The board came [Jh][9c][7h][Kd][9s], sending Rios to the rail in 2nd place. The player took home $692,029.
Stephen Nussrallah from Alpharetta, Georgia took 3rd place in the tournament for $513,902. Daniel DiPasquale from Derry, New Hampshire finished 4th to scoop $384,338. Two-time gold bracelet winner David Pham from Cerritos, California was paid $289,497 for taking 5th place in the event.
Andrew Moreno from Las Vegas, Nevada was the player to take 6th place for $219,632. David Valcourt from Canada finished 7th, good for $167,838. Marshall White from Garner, North Carolina was paid $129,197 for his 8th place. Cody Pack, a four-time WSOP Circuit gold ring winner from Cartersville, Georgia, rounded out the final table to take home $100,185.
