Tim Gundrum has winning run at MSPT Riverside

The Mid-States Poker Tour event at the Riverside Casino in Iowa, saw Timothy Gundrum crowned as champion.

The $1,100 buy-in event attracted 928. This broke records for the Riverside Casino. Their previous largest MSPT event field was 862. This is still substantially short of the MSPT Venetian's series record of 2,790 last month.

"This feels so surreal," Gundrum said in his post-tournament interview. "It's the best poker I've played in my life, over a sustained two-day period."

This was Gundrum's biggest live tourney score, more than doubling his lifetime cashes in one fell swoop. His previous biggest result was 5th at the WSOPC Hammond main event in 2017. He took down $87,072 at the Hammond event. Together the MSPT win and WSOPC cash make up the lion's share of his current $272,103 in live cashes.

"Tim Gundrum from Burr Ridge, IL outlasts a massive 928 player field to win the Iowa State Poker Championship @RiversideCasino for the [cup] and $170,769," the MSPT tweeted.

Gundrum's run

To get there, Gundrum had to outlast 928 other players and then beat Jim Erikson heads up.

Day one saw the field of 928 whittled down to 120. With 99 players paid, there was still disappointments to be doled out. It took no time at all to get down to the money. Keith Heines went to the rail in 100th place just before the first break.

After that, play loosened up and stacks started to drop fast. Stacks were reasonably deep at the final table as a result.

Now Gundrum kicked into high gear. Buoyed by a wave of good cards, Gundrum ran his stack up to well over half the chips in play by the time the table hit three-handed play. It looked like it was going to be him and Wesley Cannon fighting for the title. The chip lead swung back and forth between the two players until a timely coinflip went Gundrum's way and Cannon was shot to the rail.

Only Erickson remained between Gundrum and the $170k top prize. But Erickson was not too much of a threat. His previous tournament showings have been scant, the cards were not falling his way, and Gundrum had four out of every five chips in play going in to heads up play.

It took ten minutes for Erickson to find AxQx and shove, only to be called by Gundrum with A♦️K❤️. The board didn't help Erickson, who took $105,143 for second place.

Final table results

Featured image source: Twitter