On Monday night, Korey Payne became the newest champion on the Mid-States Poker Tour (MSPT) after besting a field of 1,239 entries to take home the top prize of $327,773 in the MSPT Venetian $1,600 Main Event. His victory capped a three-day tournament and five-day-long event that generated an overall prize pool of $1,771,770.
Payne entered the day taking a stack of 605,000 to blinds of 8,000/16,000/16,000, just one big blind above the average stack for the 63 players that returned for Day 3. Four hours later, he had maintained that stack as the field reached 30, and had doubled it by the final two tables of 16.