Andrew Chang walked into the final table of the Potomac Summer Poker Open’s $500 Monumental Stack with the shortest stack of the five players left. He walked out with the trophy anyway, and the story of how that happened is one of the stranger final-table finishes of the summer.
A Deep Field Builds Toward Decision Day
The Monumental Stack drew 403 entries to MGM National Harbor in Potomac, Maryland, building a prize pool of $167,245 for a modest $500 buy-in. That kind of turnout for a low-cost event says a lot about how healthy the live scene has been at MGM National Harbor this summer, with the venue hosting the broader Potomac Summer Poker Open series through August.
By the time the field had been whittled down to a single table, nine players remained with a shot at the title. Kyle Dishongh went out in ninth for $3,184, followed by James Freeman in eighth ($3,854), Linda Swears in seventh ($5,195), and Timothy Conrow in sixth ($6,871). That left five players to fight over the trophy and the biggest slice of what remained in the prize pool: Jack Arnal, Rick Aasen, Valentin Lita, Yonnas Banteamlak, and Chang.
Five Players Agree to a Chop, But Not on Who Gets the Trophy
Rather than play the hand-for-hand grind down to a winner, the five remaining players opted to negotiate a deal, an increasingly common move at final tables once the money gets close enough that variance starts to outweigh the incremental value of playing it out. Arnal, the chip leader at the time, locked up the largest guarantee at $22,882. Aasen took $20,546, Lita $19,747, and Banteamlak $16,897. Chang, playing the shortest stack of the group, settled for $16,600, the smallest cut of the five-way deal.
On paper, that would normally be the end of the story: a chip leader banking the biggest score, and the short stack happy to lock up a min-cash relative to the rest of the table. Instead, the players decided the title itself was still worth settling separately from the money, since a deal that only splits cash leaves the champion’s trophy unclaimed.
The Card Draw That Decided It All
With the money already locked in, the five players agreed to draw for the trophy with a single high card, winner takes the hardware regardless of stack size. Chang caught the ace and became champion of the Monumental Stack without needing to win a single hand of poker at the actual final table.
“The final table started rough, but we decided to chop then high-carded for the trophy,” Chang said afterward. “I got lucky.” He was candid about what the win meant to him beyond the money, calling it a chance to finally take the spotlight after grinding through plenty of near-misses on the way there. “It means a good amount,” he said. “I finally wanted my turn in the spotlight.”
Why Deals Like This Keep Happening at Final Tables
Chip chops are nothing new in tournament poker, but the decision to separate the money from the title is a smaller wrinkle that shows up more often than casual players might expect, particularly in mid-stakes events where the practical difference between finishing first and finishing fifth in a deal is a few thousand dollars rather than a life-changing sum. Once the money is effectively equalized, players are often happy to hand the outcome to a coin flip rather than grind out another hour of poker for marginal financial upside.
That calculation lines up with how players think about pay jumps and dealmaking more broadly. Anyone looking to understand the math behind why players agree to chops in the first place, and how to negotiate one that is fair to every stack size at the table, can find a full breakdown in Poker Pro Academy’s guide to playing pay jumps at a final table. The short version is that ICM, or the Independent Chip Model, is what most players lean on to work out a fair split before a title gets handed over to a coin flip or a card draw.
A Trophy Worth More Than the Buy-In Suggested
For a $500 event, the Monumental Stack produced a finish with more drama than plenty of higher buy-in tournaments manage all summer. Chang’s win will not move the needle on any career earnings list, but it is exactly the kind of story that makes mid-stakes festivals like the Potomac Summer Poker Open worth following, proof that a big field and a five-way deal can still produce a genuinely unpredictable ending.
As PokerNews first reported, the finish drew attention well beyond the tournament floor precisely because it flipped the usual final-table script: instead of the biggest stack closing out the win, the shortest stack at the table walked away as champion. It is a reminder that in tournament poker, once the money is settled, the trophy can still come down to nothing more than the flip of a single card.
