4 Days, $78K

Gina Stagnitto turned a $1500 buyin into 4 days of play and a $78,264 cash in the WSOP Monster Stack. 

Gina played solid all four days, really moving up midway through Day 3. She found herself sitting at about 30BB for much of the last 4 hours of play yesterday, then put on a big run to close Day 3 3/27 with 6.9 million chips.

A very aggressive start propelled her briefly into the chiplead today. Losing an all-in AK<KK dropped her back to her start-of-day stack, and she was back grinding and riding a bit of a roller-coaster.

She called the 2.6 million all in preflop of Andrew Moreno, and saw she was behind AQ-AK, with Moreno saying to his rail, "We got just what we wanted," before hiding his head in their hands so he couldn't see the outcome.

That pose kept Moreno from knowing there was a Q in the window, putting Gina ahead on the Q-J-6 flop. Moreno had 7 outs, and caught one of them with the turn T for Broadway, and Gina was down to 5.5milly.

She slid as low as 3.5m, then found AA and shoved, drawing 1 caller who had AK and suddenly she was back to 8.5 million and 13 players left in the tourney.

Then the UTG player raised to almost 600k and Gina opted to shove for her 8.6m to isolate that player and force his all in. The BB< however, had Gina covered and he made the call, turning over KK.

Gina had AJ and the UTG player had AA.

There was a K on the flop, and the river J didn't help, eliminating the UTG player in 13th and Gina in 12th, a $78k cash for here, the biggest of her career.

She walked from the table with a smile on here face, looking as relaxed as she did while playing day 3 and day 4.

"See you in the main, I'm definitely playing the Main Event now," she said as she headed off to collect her winnings.