Home / Poker News December 2012 / The Best Poker Stories of 2012 – Greg Merson Wins WSOP Main Event
The Best Poker Stories of 2012 – Greg Merson Wins WSOP Main Event
Posted by: Mark Baldwing - Sat, 2012-12-29 07:10
As the end of the year approaches, our 2012 retrospective gets more and more focused. Obviously, the WSOP Main Event winner could not be missing from our Best Poker Stories segment. After all, Greg Merson’s story was a special kind of rags to riches affair: the winner of the
WSOP Main Event had struggled with drug addiction and – although he had never been a stranger to the live poker circuit – his pre-WSOP Main Event tournament winnings weren’t particularly impressive.
Before making the October Nine, Merson had reached 5th place in the $2.5k
NL Holdem 4-handed event, narrowly missing the final table. That was but a herald of much bigger things to come: he took down his first bracelet in the $10k NL Holdem 6-handed event, pocketing $1.13 million. The player, whose tournament earnings prior to the
2012 WSOP totaled $113.2k, was suddenly a millionaire.
Despite all that success, the best was left for last for Merson: he bought into the Main Event and thus embarked on the best poker ride of his life. His Main Event wasn’t all smooth sailing though. On Day 5, he came extremely close to biting the dust. He dropped a big pot to Fabrizio Gonzalez and that left him with only 2 big blinds. On the next hand, he managed to double up though and later in the day, he managed to exact some sweet revenge against Gonzalez, doubling up again through him. His elimination staved off, Merson then began scoring knock-outs left and right. He eliminated Vanessa Selbst, Marc-Andre Ladouceur and Danny Wong among others.
He made the final table 3rd in chips, and although he wasn’t the mathematical favorite, many of the experts picked him to win it all, which he eventually did.
