MPL 4-week WPT Championship Final Tournament Report
 All
of the qualifiers who showed up received a collector's edition Minnesota
Poker League/Budweiser drinking glass.The first big hand of the tournament was between Seth Carlson (Brother's Bar & Grill-Rochester-pictured right) and Sandy Simpson (Pestello's-Backus). Sandy hit a straight on the turn holding 8-9 and got all her chips in, only to get beat on the river, when a 4th spade saved Seth's pocket KK's, giving him a King-high flush. I guess you could say this hand set the tone for the day. We saw a lot of 4-card flushes on the board and there were some really bad beats, especially on table #1, which we like to call the "Feature Table". At the end of the first break, the chip leaders were Dan Putnam 31k (T-Bonz), Jamie Elliot 26k (Moorhead VFW), & Troy Bonin 23k (Torge's). About 3 hours into the tournament, Mike Morris (Lamplighter Bar & Grill-New Ulm) became the new chip leader when his pocket Kings held up against Jamie Elliot's (Moorhead VFW) pocket Jacks and found himself with around 55k with the blinds going up to 400/800. The hand of the tournament had to be when Eric Bagley (Z103) & Mike Frank (Sirloin House) got into a tussle when the field was down to 2 tables. Both players were among the chip leaders when Eric (Q-J) got his chips in after hitting a flop of J-9-4, only to find he was behind to Mike's pocket Kings. It didn't look so good for Eric after the turn was a blank, but the river came a Jack, which not only saved Eric's tournament life, but made him a commanding chip leader. About 6 hours into the tournament, we reached the final table:
Eric was in a nice position with the 2-1 chip lead, but got even more help on the first hand. Dan Putnam had black 10-10 to Eric's red 10-10. The board was kind to Eric when the turn and river produced a heart flush. This hurt Dan's stack considerably and he ended up busting out in 8th place. Mike Frank had some tough luck, the first hand he played he doubled up the low-stacked Troy Gochanour. Then, holding Q-10 in a dominating position against Scott Schmidt's J-10 with a flop of 2-4-10, Mike moved in and got called. But you had a feeling we might see another jack...and sure enough we did. Mike had a great tournament but finished a disappointing 10th. When the field trimmed to the final three, we had Deb Ziegler (Thumper Pond), Andy Davidson (Brothers-pictured left) and Eric Bagley (Z103). With the blinds at 6,000/12,000, all players were in to see a flop. Deb Ziegler immediately moved in with her remaining 78k in first position to take down a nice pot of 90k. The battle ensued for about 45 minutes until finally Andy Davidson crippled Deb with a little luck from the river when his Q-6 vs. K-Q found a 6 on the river...Deb busted out shortly thereafter. At the beginning o f heads up play, Eric held roughly 400k to Andy's 220k. Andy had some momentum but was going to need a big hand early in order to compete. Eric played big-stack poker and eventually pinned Andy into a corner. Then, with the pressure on, Andy made a move with Q-6 to try and steal a pot post-flop but ran into Eric's 2-pair (A-3). Andy didn't go home empty handed, however. He won a seat to the next Heartland Poker Tour event ($340 buy in) at Grand Casino Mille Lacs March 24-26th. The final tournament will be televised and we wish Andy the best of luck. A quick thanks to everyone who participated in this 4-week contest and all the volunteer dealers who helped. We hope to see you all at the next state championship event at Jackpot Junction Casino May 6th! Final Results | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
