The Mid-States Poker Tour’s Michigan State Poker Championship is setting records once again and this year’s edition has proven to be one of the memorable in the history of the poker festival. The location of the poker tournaments was the FireKeepers Casino venue and 2017 was the second year in a row when the prize pool of the tournament surpassed $1 million.
This is also the year when the MSPT Michigan State Poker Championship became the poker tournament with the biggest amount of attendees. There was a total of 1,067 entries in the three flights of the first day ready to demonstrate their poker skills on the felt, respectively 244 on Day 1A, 406 on 1B, and 417 on 1C. This surpassed the previous record for attendance by a single poker player. That one was set this spring and there was a poker player present who reminded of his good performance this May. Chris Meyers, who managed to finish fifth at the Main Event of the MSPT held this spring received $42,333 then.
The 35-year-old poker pro returned for the 2017 MSPT Michigan State Poker Championship and claimed the first place in the tournament, defeating all poker players present. This brought him a sweet payday of $191,196 and the title of Champion, also bringing him a new career-high earning. When asked to commentate on his performance at the tournament, Meyers stated that this was a dream of his and he had a good feeling regarding winning the MSPT Michigan State Poker Championship. This also brought him a total of 1,900 points on the Kimo Sabe Mezcal MSPT Season 8 Player of the Year leaderboard. This swelled his points count to 3,300 since he already had 1,400 from his spring winnings. There are four more stops before the final saying becomes official and as it is known, his closest rival for the big win is poker player Keith Heine with 2,967 points.
Michigan State Poker Championship Timeline
The second day of the tournament welcomed back 192 poker players on the felt and only 108 of them were destined to receive cash for their good performance. Some of the poker names to leave without any money were Jason Zarlenga and Blake Bohn, both two-time MSPT champions, Greg Himmelbrand, who won the MSPT Maryland Live!. The bubble boy became Steven Stout, who played and lost against Dave Cronk.
As for the Final table in the tournament, Meyers entered as the chip leader and he managed to amass even more chips after the first hand of the game. He proceeded to methodically defeat the rest of the players, one of which was Atlaf Motiwala, who remained on the third place. There had been a total of 70 hands at the final table, when the heads-up duel took place between Meyer and Millard Hale, but Lady Luck smiled upon the chip leader and the WSOP Circuit ring winner Hale made it to the second place and a total of $117,818.
