Corel Theuma Wins Mid-States Poker Tour Venetian Stop With Dominant Last DayThe Malta Resident Grabbed The Top Prize Worth $113,900 On The Las Vegas Strip |
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Corel Theuma – Photo Credit: MSPT
Corel Theuma has topped the field at the Mid-States Poker Tour main event at The Venetian Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip on June 1 to win the top prize worth $113,900. This was the second-largest score for Theuma, taking a seat just behind the $164,160 he won for a third-place finish in a $10,500 buy-in side event at the 2022 World Poker Tour Championship back in 2022. His career earnings now stand at over $550,000.
“Still in shock you know,” said Theuma to the MSPT reporters after the win. He continued, “You play so many tournaments and you dream of getting in this spot and holding this trophy, it’s pretty awesome.”
Theuma also had this to say when he was asked about holding on to his status as Malta’s all-time money leader with the victory, "It means a lot to me, it’s a small island, but there’s a lot of great players there.
The $1,600 buy-in no-limit hold’em tournament attracted a field of 702 entries, with the top 79 taking home at least $3,416 in prize money. All of those players in the money returned for the start of Day 2, and after seven-and-a-half hours of play the final table of nine was reached. Notables that made a deep run along the road to the final nine were Michael Rossitto (11th), Michael Wang (16th), Rob WazWaz (29th), Shannon Shorr (32nd), Stephen Song (38th), Barry Hutter (41st), Matt Affleck (77th), and Jared Ingles (78th).
Theuma held the chip lead at the start of play with close to a million, and he had retained that lead when the final table began by increasing it more than tenfold to 10.8 million. A pair of multi-million dollar winning tournament pros were the first to exit the final table as Aaron Massey busted in ninth place, and then Spencer Champlin went out in seventh place.
Theuma scored his first knockout punch at the final table by taking out Fikret Kovac in sixth place to retain his chip lead.
The final four players then decided to chop a bit later which crowned Theuma as the champion. John Cap was fourth thanks to another deep run after the recent MSPT Deadwood stop, and another multi-million dollar winning tournament pro was given third place and that was Terry Fleischer. He increased his career earnings to over $2.3 million.
Michael Weber was the runner-up, but it was ultimately Theuma’s day with the wire-to-wire victory on the final day. Weber was awarded $109,366 thanks to his runner-up finish. It was the best tournament score to date for the player from Indiana.
Here is a look at the payouts and POY points awarded to the final table:
Place | Player | Earnings | POY Points |
1 | Corel Theuma | $113,900 | 912 |
2 | Michael Weber | $109,366 | 760 |
3 | Terry Fleischer | $108,767 | 608 |
4 | John Cap | $99,511 | 456 |
5 | Orestis Kanakopoulos | $51,070 | 380 |
6 | Fikret Kovac | $39,508 | 304 |
7 | Spencer Champlin | $30,903 | 228 |
8 | Ronald Sullivan | $24,444 | 152 |
9 | Aaron Massey | $19,556 | 76 |
The next stop on the Mid-States Poker Tour will take place at Bally’s Black Hawk Casino up in the Rockies of Colorado, and the $1,110 main event will run from July 13-16, and the full tournament series runs from July 5-16.