Poker grinders know the drill. You fire enough bullets, eventually one lands. Mintzy's been chipping away at the 2026 tournament circuit, and the MSPT $400 Bounty is paying him back again. He hit the money with 36 left out of 287, his 2nd cash in 7 tourneys this year, and he was juiced about it.
Then came the part every tournament player loves and hates in equal measure: the redraw. New table, new dynamics, and a structure that's about to get spicy. 215k at the 15k level isn't a tower of chips, and when the blinds start chewing through stacks every level, the read on the room flips fast. Survival mode meets shove-fest.
And then poker did what poker does. Mintzy got it in with the AA, ran into 6s, and the deck did its thing. 25th place, $519, plus 2 $100 bounties on the way out. Brutal way to go but a top-25 finish in a 287-runner field with bounties tacked on isn't a result you mope about for long.
The bigger picture is the volume game. 2 cashes in 7 shots is a respectable hit rate for a $400 buy-in with this kind of field, and the bounty format means you're banking side cash even when you don't make a deep run. Keep running it back, keep getting the chips in good. The variance evens out eventually.