Home / Poker News October 2012 / Meet Greg Merson, 2012 WSOP Main Event Winner
Meet Greg Merson, 2012 WSOP Main Event Winner
Posted by: James Carter. - Wed, 2012-10-31 14:43
The long three and a half month wait over, the poker world has finally learned the name of the player who will rule as the
WSOP Main Event Champion until about this time next year. The honor is nothing short of the greatest in poker. Even though there’s a new Main Event Champion crowned each year, the club to which these players belong will always be an exclusive one.
Greg Merson, this year’s winner, a recovered drug addict, credits his passion for poker with nothing less than saving his life.
Currently 24, Merson has already been around: he started playing poker in 2003, and up until his high-school graduation, he was something of an overachiever: he was a straight-A student from 6th grade all the way to his high school senior week. As soon as he finished high-school, life took a sudden southward turn for him: he started smoking weed. He began playing poker at about the same time, and the fact that he almost immediately found success at the green felt turned against him: it became a way for him to feed his addiction.
By the second semester of his freshman tenure at the University of Maryland, Merson found himself in trouble. His addiction out of control, he began attending Narcotics Anonymous meetings and he eventually managed to clean up his act. After being off drugs for a while, he decided to drop out of school in favor of a poker career.
His parents didn’t initially understand his decision, but he found success at the green felt relatively soon: by 2008 – aged 19 – he was making 6 figures playing poker. Success once again returned him to drugs, this time through alcohol. During his relapse, Merson lost a ton of money, but he eventually regained his sobriety and here he is, at the top, hoping that success won’t end up taking him down again…
