At the World Series of Poker (WSOP), and really anywhere else for that matter, No-Limit Hold’em tournaments are the highlight events because of their size and the excitement of the “all-in.” Other games, particularly an old favorite like Seven Card Stud, tend to take a back seat. But here’s the thing: despite their small size, Stud events are often the toughest challenges of them all because their fields are densely packed with pros and specialists. This made John Monnette’s relatively easy victory in Event #10: $5,000 Seven Card Stud that much more impressive, as he cruised to a $190,826 pay day.
As already mentioned, the tournament was small by recent WSOP standards – just 145 players paid the $5,000 entry – but it was jam-packed with great players. Almost half the players in the tournament were owners of a gold bracelet. Exactly half of the 16 players who cashed, including final table members Perry Friedman and Jeff Lisandro, had won WSOP tournaments. Minefields were everywhere.
Despite that experienced field, however, Monnette entered the final table as the man to beat with a chip stack of 547,000, compared to just 404,000 for his next closest competitor. Two hours in, he was no longer the chip leader, but he had still increased his stack to 600,000, second to Huu Vinh’s 655,000. By the time it got to three-handed, it was still Vinh in the lead and Monnette in second, but at no point was Monnette ever really in trouble. He might not have been leading the whole way, but he was always in a very comfortable position.
From there, though, it was all Jon Monnette. He took a bite out of Vinh’s stack, then Timothy Finne’s, and was soon up over the million chip mark. In less than two hours, Monnette was totally dominating the table with over 1.3 million chips, compared less than 900,000 for the other two players combined. It was largely academic from there. After Finne was knocked out in 3rd place, Monnette went into heads-up play against Vinh with an overwhelming 1.89 million to 285,000 chip lead.
It took just 20 minutes for Monnette to sew up the championship. Vinh was all-in pre-flop with Q♣-8♥-3♥ while Monnette obviously had him covered, holding A♣-Q♥-J♣. Neither player hit anything on fourth street, but Monnette found the J♦ on fifth street to pad his lead. After that it was all bricks for both players, so the pair of Jacks was more than enough for Monnette to win the title.
This is John Monnette’s second bracelet in his live tournament career. He won his first last year in the $2,500 8-Game event, taking down a $278,144 first prize. This was also his second cash of the 2012 WSOP and 22nd of his career.
2012 WSOP Event #10: $5,000 Seven Card Stud – Final Table Results
1. John Monnette – $190,826
2. Huu Vinh – $117,913
3. Timothy Finne – $73,847
4. Perry Friedman – $53,470
5. Jeff Lisandro – $41,789
6. Mark Dickstein – $33,325
7. Bryn Kenney – $27,062
8. Raymond Dehkharghani – $22,332
