Greg Merson wins the 2012 WSOP Main Event
Photo: WSOP.com

Greg Merson from Laurel, MD became the lastest WSOP Main Event Champion after a marathon poker session in the Penn & Teller Theater. The popular east coast grinder began 3-handed play with the chiplead, endured a few beats along the way, but eventually knocked out Jesse Sylvia to earn the title after 13 hours at the table. It was an exhausting evening for all involved but Merson and his supporters were not thinking about it as the final hand played out in the early morning.

WSOP staff changed the November Nine final day format from heads up to 3-handed play a few years ago to insure a decent amount of play on ESPN. Both were probably unprepared for an affair which started in primetime on the east coast but lasted until most other cable channels were well into infomercial time. The chiplead swapped several times throughout, bad beats happened, fortunes change. There were enthusiastic supporters (including his parents) and sleeping observers and class in the end when Merson held back his crowd until he could shake Sylvia’s hand.

Merson is the first player since Chris Ferguson in 2000 to win the WSOP Main Event after winning a bracelet earlier in the same year. He won the $10,000 NLH 6-Handed tournament just a few days before the Main Event kicked off and stayed hot through the Main. Merson picked up $8,531,853 and a pretty sweet bracelet for his efforts. This result also pushed him ahead of WSOP Europe champion Phil Hellmuth to top the 2012 WSOP Player of the Year leaderboard. Not too shabby.

1st Greg Merson – $8,531,853
2nd Jesse Sylvia – $5,295,149
3rd Jake Balsiger – $3,799,073
4th Russell Thomas – $2,851,537
5th Jeremy Ausmus – $2,155,313
6th Andras Koroknai – $1,640,902
7th Michael Esposito – $1,258,040
8th Robert Salaburu – $971,360
9th Steven Gee – $754,798

Link Dump

Tweet(s) of the Day – There were plenty of Tweets hitting the internet following the crazy long match from congrats to snark.

Congratulations to @gregy20723, the newly minted World Champion of Poker and 2012 Player of the Year!Greg, you played great poker.

— phil_hellmuth (@phil_hellmuth) October 31, 2012

Congratulations @gregy20723! Happiest about the grace you showed in winning. Proves how much you deserved it!! — Matt Savage (@SavagePoker) October 31, 2012

ESPN devoted 12 straight hours to the @wsop, and 0 minutes to @karaotr interviewing winner @gregy20723. That’s wrong for so many reasons. — BJ Nemeth (@BJNemeth) October 31, 2012

Pretty sure all the TVs in hell show 11 hours of 3-handed poker on loop.

— Dave Behr (@ftrainpoker) October 31, 2012

A Clean Getaway – Lance Bradley wrote this piece about Merson this summer about his recovery from substance abuse and his plans for the future.

Passion for poker ‘saved my life,’ Greg Merson says – Merson’s story is also being told by the mainstream media, this time by his hometown Baltimore Sun this weekend.

Greg Merson: Epic Comeback Spurs World Series of Poker Victory – Even popular, high traffic sports blogs picked up on the story. Most of them because it blasted through ESPN’s scheduled programming but this is a decent article by Bleacher Report.

WSOP 2012: Main Event Champion Greg Merson – Even though ESPN didn’t bother having a decent interview by Kara Scott, PokerNews was able to grab an interview by Kristy Arnett

We have few rules here at Pokerati, just possible guidelines. But with that, the few that we do have tend to be important, and one I’ve told contributors before: Twitter is not a primary source. You’d think I woulda listened to my own advice and known better than to report something that came from a single source on Twitter, even if it was from a verified account. But it was Doyle! @TexDolly! Aren’t we supposed to believe everything most of what he says?

Well apparently the Grand Ole Man of Poker has had a change of heart. Not a medical transplant mind you, and frankly, based on his latest tweet, not even a change of heart about playing per se … but he does report his own change of mind, saying he’ll be there, in the 2011 WSOP main event … he just won’t be happy about it. And he did use the word “official”, too.

No tweets on who’s putting him in and what kinda “good for poker” guilt trip anybody or corporate entity may or may not have put on him.

He said it on Twitter so it’s gotta be true …

@TexDolly
No main event for me.maybe the DOJ will stake me.
1:10 AM Jul 4th via Twitter for iPhone

Less than a half hour earlier Brunson tweeted:

@TexDolly
Busted… Total nightmare… Goodbye WSOP
12:42 AM Jul 4th via Twitter for iPhone

… which seems about as long as it might take to come up with such a jab at the DOJ.

UPDATE: He changed his mind.

Still looking to get confirmation on how many main events Brunson has missed before. Many seem to recall his sitting out for a few years in the ’80s — as do I — but have yet to find any definitive source on where he stands in the record books for total number of WSOP main events, consecutive or otherwise.

Brunson joins a growing list of prominent big-money pros who have publicly declared their intent to sit out the 2011 WSOP, along with big-money Full Tilters who have gone silent amid severe legal and financial difficulties and thus are expected to be no-shows.

Doyle Brunson
Phil Ivey
Tony G
Howard Lederer
Chris Ferguson

Am I missing anyone? I mean other than Russ Hamilton …

One of my personal faves, @VanessaRousso, will be hosting a 1-day crash course for the WSOP main event, with strategy discussion specifically geared for this one unique and special tournament. She says she’ll show you how to apply advanced game theory and winning secrets to huge-field deepstack events … as well as instruction on how recent changes to tournament structure affect strategy and play.

It takes place at Aria Casino on July 7, during Day 1A of the WSOP main event. Read below for more information if you want to go. Of all the boot camps out there, I think this one will probably be the best because Vanessa’s a girl, and everyone knows girls are smarter than boys. Tee-hee.

More…

While we get all caught up with life here at Pokerati, you may want to begin getting to know your latest 20something super-champion, which has me wondering … when will be the next time we see a WSOP main event winner who is old enough to rent a car?

Eastgate (22), Cada (21), Duhamel (23) …

With this year’s WSOP Champion just a few hours from being crowned, most of the eyes in the poker world are affixed squarely on Las Vegas. But there is quite a bit of other action going on around the world, including a slightly less publicized delayed final table that dealt with a cheating scandal, as well as a couple of WPT events.

World Series of Poker Main Event (Las Vegas, Nevada): Well, unless you’ve been living underneath a rock for the last four months, you know that the final table of the 2010 WSOP Main Event finally got back underway Saturday night, and did not disappoint as far as excitement goes. If you weren’t checking out Pokerati for some strange reason for your Main Event coverage you should definitely check out the work Michael Reed and Mark Gahagan were doing, as well as Dan and Pauly rattling off quite a few episodes of Tao of Pokerati.

Heads-up play between Jonathan Duhamel and John Racener will take place tonight (Monday) at 8 pm PT. Duhamel holds a substantial 6-1 chip lead over Racener, thanks to a hand with Joseph Cheong that will be discussed for a very long time amongst poker fans. The winner will receive $8.9 million, the third largest prize for a WSOP champion, trailing just Jamie Gold and Peter Eastgate. [WSOP]

Partouche Poker Tour Main Event (Cannes, France): The other table that came back from a months-long hiatus was the Main Event of the Partouche Poker Tour in Cannes. It should have been a “November Nine” for them as well, but when play resumed they were one player short.

German player Ali Tekintamgac was disqualified when tournament staff reviewed tapes from earlier in the tournament and discovered he was being tipped off to other players’ hands. He was working with people who obtained media credentials for the sole purpose of signaling Tekintamgac. This is not the first report of him allegedly cheating, as a post from several months ago on Two Plus Two apparently refers to a similar incident.

When they actually got underway, it was Vanessa Selbst beating out a fairly impressive final table that included Fabrice Soulier. Selbst took $1.8 million for her win, bringing her lifetime cashes to almost $4 million, and capping an impressive year that also saw her win the NAPT Mohegan Sun main event. [PokerStars Blog]

WPT Foxwoods (Mashantucket, Connecticut): It was almost a week ago now, but Jeffrey Forrest came out on top of a final table of impressive young players that included Tom Marchese, Nikolai Yakovenko, and Kevin Stammen. Forrest won $550,00 for his efforts, besting David Inselberg heads-up. [Foxwoods Live, WPT]

WPT Amneville (Amneville, France): Forrest wasn’t the only one to capture a WPT title this week. Sam El Sayed won the first ever WPT Amneville for just under $600,000. He also won a $25,000 seat to the WPT Championship at Bellagio, while second place finisher Franck Pepe settled for $320,000 and a $10,000 WPT Paris seat. [PartyPoker Blog]

MPCC Main Event (Lisboa, Macau): The PokerStars-affiliated Macau Poker Cup Championship held their main event this week as well, drawing 254 players. The final table featured players from seven different countries on four different continents, with Jilian Hasse of Germany winning the title and HK$1,064,000. [PokerStars Blog]

Caeser’s Classic (Las Vegas, Nevada): The Main Event of the month-long tournament series brought out quite a few of the local pros, as 290 players came out to play in this one. Among those making it into the money were Bryan Devonshire and Sorel Mizzi. Phillippe Boucher was the winner, beating a final table that included Blake Kelso and Justin Young for a first place payday just short of $60,000. [Cardplayer]

Elsewhere… Kurt Fraser of Schaumburg, IL won the HPT Tama in Tama Iowa for $75,000… Karina Jett already has one big buy-in out of the way as she won her seat in a charity event hosted at the Rio during the day off between nine-handed and heads-up play at the WSOP Main Event.

Online: “NickDandalos” channeled the Greek, beating Jason “strassa2” Strasser on his way to winning the PokerStars Sunday Million and $195,000, while “salue” took down the $750K on FullTilt. Annette_15 finished second in FullTilt’s Sunday Mulligan.

More multimedia for your Friday … Team Pokerati got some good lovin’ on ESPN this week. Good thing, too, because The Big Randy would fail to deliver on his patch-wearing duties early on Day 4 when he happened to be sitting next to Michael Mizrachi … have a quick listen to step back in WSOP-time when Pauly and I seemed to have a certain prescience about both patches and Mizrachis starting to mean something:

Tao of Pokerati
Episode 64: Big Head Randy and the Min-Cashers – Dan and Pauly hang out at the Bad Beat bar and wonder if they are coolers? Or if the Big Randy had busted out because he was not wearing a Pokerati patch. Yes, the Big Randy busted before the money bubble. The discussion shifts to the bubble strategy for PokerStars qualifiers who also have a PCA package riding on the line along with the min-cash.

Fortunately, team captain Tom didn’t disappoint (anyone but himself and his family). Schneider showed up on ESPN this week, playing the main event on the outermost feature table, and for a surprisingly funny bit with him and fellow Team Pokerati-er Julie Schneider, as Norman Chad tries to learn about cooking and/or what makes a poker marriage work:

Be sure to check out Pauly’s post about this episode — scroll down to Day in the Life of the DonkeyBomber and Pancakes with Angry Julie — for some decidedly Tao take on Tom and his Loudmouth living.

More…

We were right … a Nguyen made the final table, as statistically we knew one would … of course there was no way AK was going to catch up with Matthew Jarvis’ QQ.

Episode 77: The 5:41am Finale – After an exhausting evening, Dan and Pauly capture the 10th place elimination in the Main Event as Brandon Steven bubbles off the final table. The November Nine is finally set and you get to hear the celebration going on the background as everyone rushed the stage.

Shortly after we uploaded the above episode, I stepped outside for a little perspective … and found some … with a bit more than I was expecting for an early morning close:

Your 2010 WSOP final table players and chip counts:

Jonathan Duhamel — 65,975,000 — Boucherville QC

John Dolan – 46,250,000 – Bonita Springs FL

Joseph Cheong – 23,525,000 — La Mirada CA

John Racener – 19,050,000 – Port Richey FL

Matthew Jarvis – 16,700,000 – Surrey BC

Filippo Candio – 16,400,000 – Cagliari  IT

Michael Mizrachi — 14,450,000 – Miami FL

Soi Nguyen –9,650,000 – Santa Ana  CA

Jason Senti – 7,625,000 – St. Louis Park MN

I’d say see ya’ll in November, but I think we all know we’ll be talking about lotsa things before then. Click below for the Nolan’s early write-up from WSOP.com:

More…

For many of us here in Vegas — even when the WSOP is not in season — sunrise is often a sign that “it’s time to go to bed!” Tonight’s a little different, and not just because it started yesterday … here’s a view from across the highway, taken and twit-shared by @SavagePoker, about 20 minutes ago:

A security guard asked us if this was the longest final table bubble ever. “That’s a good question,” said Pauly. It’s by far been the longest we can remember. And while it’s possible such a 10-down-to-9 occurred back in the old days … I highly doubt it. It’s a testament to the value of making the November Nine, if anything, and ironic how it brings us back to the old-old days when poker tourneys were routinely settled over marathon sessions.

Episode 76: On and On and On and On with Benjo — Some four hours into the Final Table of 10, people are getting antsy about getting to the November Nine. Alcohol is wearing off and drugs are kicking in … causing some people to sleep on chairs and others to run randomly across the Amazon. (Everyone’s got the munchies, but the cupboard is bare!) Tony the security guard gets nervous about his staff having to go home at 7am, and the players … it’s call-bet-fold, maybe bet-raise-fold.

I don’t know what they said, but I heard the entities from Wicked Chops talking with @JessWelman about something involving the Isle of Man. I was very curious, particularly because I eventually plan to reveal the answer to that trivia question that no one — not even Mathers — answered correctly. (The answer was Isle of Man.)

The end of the Series is a time when poker media types often throw out much of the good stuff they’ve heard but haven’t yet shared, or exchange different bits of info to figure out what all adds up and what doesn’t. So I headed their way …

As a longtime, multi-show podcaster, there’s little I dislike more than when someone encroaches on an episode in progress … whether that be a solicitor at the door (when on skype) or an ignorant walker-upper during mobile recordings. That’s what I did here. Oops. My bad, but hey, Jess is plenty familiar with the concept of me botching up a show, so …

Their conversation seemed intelligent and intense for several minutes. That’s all I know. Thus, I plan to skip over the part with Jeff Madsen (sorry dude) to get right to the Jess part to hear what sort of industry dirt, informed or otherwise, they were batting around.

http://wickedchopspoker.com/wicked-chops-podcast-ep-11-with-jeff-madsen-jessica-welman/

The final day of the Main Event gets underway shortly after 12pm today with 27 players remaining as they play down to the November Nine. Here’s how they’ll be seated, with about 1:20:00 remaining in level 30 (60,000/120,000/15,000):

Amazon 100:

Seat 1: Michael Mizrachi – 6,300,000
Seat 2: Scott Clements – 7,250,000
Seat 3: Michiel Sijpkens – 7,765,000
Seat 4: John Dolan – 2,175,000
Seat 5: John Racener – 10,470,000
Seat 6: Brandon Steven – 6,045,000
Seat 7: Redmond Lee – 3,315,000
Seat 8: William Thorson – 3,680,000
Seat 9: Mads Wissing – 3,070,000

Amazon 101:

Seat 1: Johnny Lodden – 1,560,000
Seat 2: Joseph Cheong – 24,490,000
Seat 3: Jason Senti – 13,550,000
Seat 4: Matt Affleck -12,515,000
Seat 5: Matthew Jarvis – 13,300,000
Seat 6: Matthew Bucaric – 2,270,000
Seat 7: David Baker – 6,825,000
Seat 8: Filippo Candio – 10,020,000
Seat 9: Ronnie Bardah – 2,525,000

Amazon 102:

Seat 1: Adam Levy – 4,745,000
Seat 2: Benjamin Statz – 9,885,000
Seat 3: Soi Nguyen – 23,100,000
Seat 4: Duy Le – 7,255,000
Seat 5: Jonathan Duhamel – 10,520,000
Seat 6: Robert Pisano – 8,060,000
Seat 7: Pascal LeFrancois – 15,780,000
Seat 8: Hasan Habib – 1,510,000
Seat 9: Patrick Eskandar – 1,655,000

See who makes the November Nine at WSOP.com.

The Main Event will resume around 8:30pm with 42 players remaining, playing down to 27. The chip leader is Cuong Nguyen, who won the biggest pot of the tournament so far off of Theo Jorgensen on the last hand before the break when his Kh-Jc outflopped Jorgensen’s Ac-3c when it came down Kc-5h-9c to take the lead with 19,520,000 in chips. Joseph “subiime” Cheong is 2nd with 14,000,000 in chips. Play resumes at 8:30 with the start of level 29 with the blinds at 50/100/10k, follow the updates over at wsop.com

Notables:
William Thorson – 12,290,000
John Racener – 9,275,000
Bryn Kenney – 7,400,000
Matt Affleck – 5,535,000
Adam Levy – 5,180,000
Scott Clements – 4,200,000
Michael Mizrachi – 3,655,000
Johnny Lodden – 3,495,000
David Baker – 2,960,000
Theo Jorgensen 2,300,000
Hasan Habib – 520,000

Notable Eliminations:
Jacobo Fernandez
Tony Dunst
Alexander Kostritsyn
Peter Jetten
David Benyamine
Eric Baldwin
Jean-Robert Bellande