With over 60 events in the 2010 World Championship of Online Poker it can be hard for a tournament to stand out. A great way to garner a lot of attention is to have an event with a huge prize pool and great professionals making the final table. The two-day $1,050 buy-in Event #42 had a whole lot of both as it came to an end early Tuesday morning. With more than 3,100 participants including a large amount of PokerStars sponsored professionals Event #42 was a railbird’s dream. The $3,122,000 prize pool was one of the biggest of the entire 2010 WCOOP and the $491,715 first-place prize will go down as one of the biggest scores of the year. PokerStars was well represented late in the tournament as a handful of their own professionals made deep runs. Two professionals, Jason Mercier and Chad Brown, both made the final table but had drastically different experiences there. Other notable PokerStars pros in the money included Barry “barryg1” Greenstein, Steve “sevejpa” Paul-Ambrose, and Humberto Brenes who all finished inside the top-200.
Once the final table was formed it was hard to list a favorite. With so many great players on hand and with deep stacks it was going to be a while before a winner was crowned. The final table chip-leader was “loooser17” who held more than 9,500,000 chips at just 40,000/80,000 blinds. He was followed closely by the man on his left, Jason “APerfectGent” Schwartz. Other players to keep an eye on at the final table were Chad Brown, Jason Mercier, and Dani “supernova9” Stern who became famous for his participation in the G4 TV Show “2 Months 2 Million”.
Seat 1: osten (1,396,140 in chips)
Seat 2: TeamWispy (6,395,189 in chips)
Seat 3: bastet2004 (4,038,808 in chips)
Seat 4: supernova9 (3,947,328 in chips)
Seat 5: JasonMercier (4,487,801 in chips)
Seat 6: DHUSTLER15 (6,414,317 in chips)
Seat 7: ChadBrownPRO (2,377,371 in chips)
Seat 8: loooser17 (9,563,571 in chips)
Seat 9: APerfectGent (8,209,475 in chips)
With so many great players at the final table it was only a matter of time until a famous professional or two bit the dust. First to go was Chad Brown who took home just $26,537 for his efforts. Brown has made a name for himself in live poker tournaments where he has made a large amount of television appearances in WPT and WSOP events. While he has yet to ship a WSOP bracelet he does have a handful of six-figure scores to his name including a 2nd place finish in the 2007 WSOP 2-7 Championship for $324,777. Stern, while not as accomplished on the live scene, is one of the best high-stakes cash game players online today. His appearance, along with Jay “KRANTZ” Rosenkrantz, Brian “flawless_victory” Roberts, and Emil “whitelime” Patel, drew rave reviews from the online poker community. While the players were ultimately unsuccessful in earning $2,000,000 over two months they did give a great insight into the poker scene in Las Vegas and what it takes to be a high-stakes cash game player. While Stern might consider himself more of a cash game professional he has had quite a large amount of success in tournaments where he has nearly $700,000 in scores on PokerStars alone.
The final table eventually worked down to a final three – a solid trio of players including looser17, “osten”, and PokerStars pro Jason Mercier. Even with two other high-stakes professionals competing against him Mercier had to be considered a favorite when three-handed play began. One of the best tournament professionals in the world, Mercier has won millions of dollars the past few years in Championship events. His biggest score came in the EPT Sanremo Championship where he earned $1,372,893 for his victory in April 2008. Earlier this year he won the $25,000 NAPT Shoot-Out for $475,000. He also has a WSOP bracelet to his name which came last year in the $1,500 PLO event which netted him $237,462. Mercier has also made several appearances in televised cash games including the PokerStars.net “Big Game” and GSN’s “High Stakes Poker”. Despite his live success he had still not seen a lot of success online. That all changed rather quickly yesterday when he accepted a deal worth at least $375,000 at the final table.
With all three players deciding to chop a bit of the air was let out of the final table’s tires but there was still $60,000 up for grabs in a winner-take-all format. Heads-up eventually came down to Mercier and osten who battled it out for a while before playing an interesting final hand. With just top-pair no kicker osten decided to get three bets in on the flop and then check-raise the turn all-in against Mercier. Unfortunately for him that decision was quite costly as Mercier had three of a kind and easily took down the final hand and more than $435,000.
Seat 1: osten (11898139 in chips)
Seat 5: JasonMercier (34931861 in chips)
JasonMercier: posts small blind 125000
osten: posts big blind 250000
*** HOLE CARDS ***
JasonMercier: raises 250097 to 500097
osten: calls 250097
*** FLOP *** [4c 4h 6s]
osten: checks
JasonMercier: bets 428273
osten: raises 821727 to 1250000
JasonMercier: raises 1332373 to 2582373
osten: calls 1332373
*** TURN *** [4c 4h 6s] [Jh]
osten: checks
JasonMercier: bets 2728322
osten: raises 6056097 to 8784419 and is all-in
JasonMercier: calls 6056097
*** RIVER *** [4c 4h 6s Jh] [7h]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
osten: shows [7d 6d] (two pair, Sevens and Sixes)
JasonMercier: shows [5d 4d] (three of a kind, Fours)
JasonMercier collected 23796278 from pot
Congratulations goes to Mercier and all 396 players who made the money in the 2010 World Championship of Online Poker’s Event #42!
PokerStars WCOOP Event 42 $3M Guaranteed
3,122 Entrants; $3,122,000 prize pool
*3-way chop
1. JasonMercier $435,862
2. osten $317,435
3. loooser17 $367,500
4. DHUSTLER15 $179,515
5. APerfectGEnt $135,807
6. TeamWispy $104,587
7. bastet2004 $73,367
8. supernova9 $42,209
9. ChadBrownPRO $26,537