Monday, May 22, 2017 1:36 AM Local Time
Brett Bader Wins Second Ring of the Season
South Florida pro vaults into contention for Global Casino Championship seat
The Monster Stack is always a popular event at any given Circuit stop, and this trip to Harrah’s New Orleans was no exception.
From a big field of 750 entries, Brett Bader emerged as the winner of the $365-buy-in event, claiming his second gold ring and the $45,000 top prize. The victory is the second on the WSOP Circuit for Bader, who won his first ring just this past November at the Palm Beach Kennel Club.
Perhaps just as importantly, though, this win also earned Bader 50 points in the season-long race for seats in the WSOP Global Casino Championship, bringing him to a total of 147.5 points and moving him just above the current qualification threshold.
Bader is 26-year-old professional poker player from Jericho, New York, on the North Shore of Long Island. He now makes his home in the poker hotbed of South Florida, though. Primarily a cash game player, Bader is still a fixture in the region’s medium-stakes tournaments, and he typically plays a full schedule each summer in Las Vegas, too.
The run to this win began with a productive Day 1 performance, with Bader ending the day fifth in chips with 54 players remaining. He quadrupled his stack as he picked his way from there to the final table, entering nine-handed play in third place.
The group of finalists was a tough one that included WSOP bracelet winner Jim Willerson and a handful of WSOP Circuit ring winners, too. Willerson has one himself, Krzysztof Stybaniewicz two, and Robert Georato has three of them.
By the time they were three-handed fort the Monster Stack ring, Stybaniewicz, Georato, and Bader were competing to add to their collection of Circuit hardware, and Bader was the one who snagged this one. Georato fell in third place, and Bader went on to defeat Stybaniewicz in a long heads-up duel to secure his second Circuit victory and his second gold ring.