Home / Poker News May 2013 / EPT Monte Carlo Grand Final – Open-Face Chinese Poker Event
EPT Monte Carlo Grand Final – Open-Face Chinese Poker Event
Posted by: James Carter. - Wed, 2013-05-08 06:33
On Monday, the
EPT Monte Carlo Grand Final’s €2,150 Open-Face Chinese Poker event kicked off and wrapped up, with the victory of PokerStars pro Jason Mercier, who hadn’t tasted triumph in a major live poker event for more than a year.
A total of 52 players coughed up the above said buy-in for the
poker tournament, to which 17 re-buys were later added. Given the newly found popularity of the game of Open-Face Chinese poker, it didn’t come as a surprise that many of the participants were well-known poker pros, despite the fact that several of them – like Barry Greenstein – were dissuaded from participating by the fact that the event ran parallel with the Main Event.
Luke Schwartz, Shaun Deeb and David Benyamine all played though, together with Joseph Cheong and Scott Seiver.
At the beginning of the year, Mercier has set himself a goal: to reach $1 million in tournament profits before the end of the year. In February, Mercier came forth stating that 2012 had been the worst year of his professional poker career and that he intended to do something about it this year. His lofty goal is still well out of his reach though: he only took down €48k for his Open-Face Chinese poker win, but it is a start.
While his last tournament victory came way back in December 2011, in the Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic’s $100k High Roller, he did in fact score a cash finish this year: a $22.5k, 25th place deep run in the
EPT’s London Main Event. With the WSOP still on the horizon though, Mercier will have plenty of opportunities to better his tournament statistics.
In the Open-Face Chinese poker event, he bested Yakov Onuchin heads-up. Onuchin’s share of the action was €30k.
