America's favourite poker series, the Mid-States Poker Tour (MSPT), has moved to Bally's Black Hawk Casino in Colorado for the period January 15-26. As a result, the series was now called the MSPT Black Hawk and offered a $300,000 Main Event.
The buy-in of $1,100 was paid 636 times, which totally smashed the guarantee. The prizepool was eventually worth a whopping $615,420 and a cash prize of $127,849 awaited the winner.
The well-known American poker coach Faraz Jaka also came to play for this amount, and he fought his way into the final heads-up match. Here he started with a chiplead, holding a stack worth 10,080,000 and his opponent Zach Gutierrez held a stack worth 9,000,000.
After a few hands, however, Zach Gutierrez claimed the chip lead and now held a stack of over 14 million, dropping Faraz to 5,000,000. Even that didn't stop Jake, however, and he eventually managed to win the tournament, taking home $127,849 and bringing his live tournament winnings to nearly $8.2 million. Zach Gutierrez earned $77,952 for his second place finish.
| 1 | Faraz Jaka | San Jose, CA | $127,849 |
| 2 | Zach Gutierrez | Denver, CO | $77,952 |
| 3 | Michael Banducci | Traverse City, MI | $58,000 |
| 4 | Umut Ozturk | St. Paul, MN | $43,032 |
| 5 | Caden Coleman | Oxbow, ND | $32,430 |
| 6 | Kelly Mahana | Denver, CO | $24,322 |
| 7 | Ross Babel | Breckenridge, CO | $18,710 |
| 8 | Mike Wheeler | Aurora, CO | $11,226 |
| 9 | Dianwei Sun | Aurora, CO | $11,226 |
Source - Pokernews, MSPT