Jose Montes became on Monday the latest WPTDeepStacks Main Event champion after scoring a victory at Maryland Live! Casino. Montes beat a field of 337 other entries to add another title to his former live poker accomplishments.
The player won a WSOP Circuit Main Event in Choctaw back in 2015 for a gold ring and a first-place prize of $352,669, his career’s heftiest cash. A month later he bested another live event’s field – the Heartland Poker Tour Black Hawk $1,650 Main Event for $240,523 in prize money.
His live tournament career includes 59 in-the-money finishes in a number of prestigious events. Montes collected $95,032 for his latest poker triumph at Maryland Live!. Thus, his poker bankroll grew to more than $1.1 million.
Montes joined the field of the $1,500 buy-in WPTDeepStacks Main Event on Day 1B. He performed quite well during his first day and survived through Day 2 to lock a place among the final nine. The player entered the official final table sixth in chips with 647,000.
Being positioned in the middle of the final table leaderboard did not discourage Montes. On the contrary, he was strongly motivated to improve his position and did that within the matter of several hands.
Despite his efforts, the player found himself to be the short stack at some point and the only of five contenders left not to be holding a seven-figure stack. Montes had regained composure and momentum by the time there were only four left, and took the lead.
His troubles were far from over, though. The player dropped as the short stack once more during three-handed battle. Yet, he made it to heads-up, holding the chip lead and never looking back. The two-handed duel did not take long before completed with Montes scooping the title and his heads-up opponent Nicholas Verderamo walking out in second place with a consolation prize of $66,583. The moment of victory came when Verderamo’s [Ah][9h] clashed against Montes’ [7c][7s].
The winner’s first-place prize also included a seat into the WPTDeepStacks Championship, worth $3,000. The event, which will mark the end of the tour’s fourth season, is scheduled to take place on December 1-4, 2017 at Thunder Valley Casino Resort in Lincoln, California. It will offer participants the opportunity to win a share of the $1 million guaranteed prize pool.
However, WPTDeepStacks still has many stops to complete before the time for its season-ending tournament comes. Holland Casino Amsterdam in the Dutch capital is set to be the next such stop. The festival is slated to kick off on May 5 and to run through May 13.
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