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 EPT SEASON 4 : SAN REMO
JASON MERCIER WINS POKERSTARS.COM EPT SAN REMO
Date:Saturday, April 5, 2008
Venue: Casino Sanremo, San Remo, Italy
Event: PokerStars.com EPT San Remo €5,000 No Limit Texas Hold'em
Jason Mercier of the USA won the biggest poker tournament ever held in Italy today, the €3.1m sell-out PokerStars.com EPT San Remo.
The 21-year-old math teacher from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, overcame a field of 701 players to secure a first prize of €869,000 ($1.35m).
In the fastest final table in EPT history, Mercier busted Frenchmen Antony Lellouche (2nd) and Erik Koskas (4th), plus local Italian champion Dario Minieri (3rd) in just two and a half hours.
Mercier qualified for the €5,000 event via an online satellite on PokerStars, the world's largest online cardroom. He said: "I felt pretty confident of winning after making a tough call against Eric. That was when I really started to believe I could win."
The play against Koskas, where Mercier successfully called the Frenchman's all-in bluff with a pair of fives, was the talk of the San Remo casino. Eric Koskas said afterwards: "It wasn't just an amazing call. It was the best poker play I have ever seen."
With Mercier now holding 80 per cent of the chips, it took him just two hands to eliminate Lellouche in 2nd place. It was Lellouche's fourth EPT cash - the popular Frenchman already cashed at two EPT Grand Finals and came sixth at EPT London last September.
Minieri, who started the day as chip leader, benefitted from vociferous support from a strongly partisan Italian crowd. The 23-year-old from Roman fell to Mercier when his pair of queens was beaten by a flush on the river.
Among the star names in San Remo were Tony G, Patrick Antonius, Todd Brunson and Roland de Wolfe, as well as TeamPokerStars Pros Daniel Negreanu, Luca Pagano, Katja Thater, Noah Boeken, Vanessa Rousso, Lee Nelson, Raymond Rahme and Isabelle Mercier, plus 164 players who won their seats online with PokerStars.
Mercier was playing in only his second live event. He wins not only the San Remo title but a seat in next week's €10,000 EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo which starts next week (April 12-17). Online qualifier satellites are running on PokerStars until midnight Eastern Time tomorrow (April 6).
Final table/payouts:
Position | Name | Country | PS Status | Polish Zloty | € |
1 | Jason Mercier | USA | PokerStars qualifier | 869,000 |
2 | Antony Lellouche | France | | 505,000 |
3 | Dario Minieri | Italy | Team PokerStars Pro | 287,600 |
4 | Eric Koskas | France | PokerStars qualifier | 223,600 |
5 | Gregory Genovese | Italy | | 188,500 |
6 | William Thorson | Sweden | | 140,600 |
7 | Dag Palovic | Slovakia | | 111,800 |
8 | Marcus Bower | US | PokerStars qualifier | 76,700 |
PokerStars Facts:
PokerStars is the world's largest and most innovative online poker site with more than 12 million players worldwide. PokerStars was the first site to introduce features that became the industry standard and offers the highest levels of security and customer support in the online poker world. To date, PokerStars has dealt out over 13 billion hands and run more than 50 million poker tournaments, awarding well over $8 billion in prize money.
PokerStars is the world's largest poker tournament room running over 50,000 tournaments every day. In February 2006, PokerStars.com entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the first poker website ever to reach the 100,000 simultaneous player mark. The PokerStars Sunday Million weekly event is the largest weekly tournament on the planet with a $1 million guaranteed tournament prize pool.
PokerStars is the title sponsor of the European Poker Tour (EPT). Each Autumn, PokerStars hosts the world's largest online tournament, the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP), which in 2007 featured a record prize pool of over $24 million. PokerStars also sponsors major events around the globe, such as the World Cup of Poker which took place in September 2007.
IMAGES
For a selection of hi-res images, please go to www.actionimages.com . Strict conditions govern the use of these images which can be used free of charge for three months from the date of publication on the www.ept.com website; benefit shall not be assigned to any third party and both photographer Neil Stoddart and PokerStars must be credited. On actionimages.com, the log-in is psmedia ; password is pokerstars08. To view images, tick the event you want, then click Search. To download images:
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For further media enquiries:
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