It's over. After 13 hours of play and 399 hands, the American poker pro Greg Merson, 24, was crowned the champion of the 43rd Annual World Series of Poker Main Event! Merson sat down at the final table two days ago with the third largest stack. After about seven and a half hours of play, only three players had chips left and Merson had 88.35 million chips - about 26 million more than his clos[...] Read more » 2012 WSOP: Greg Merson Wins The Main Event ($8,531,853)!
Joined: Mar '11
Location: United Kingdom
Age: 39 (M)
Posts: 1646
must be an amazing feeling being ahead when the other player is all in and your hand holds up. that jake balsiger was only playing $0.5/0.10 cash games a year ago. now look at him, a millionaire! cant be bad. just goes to show it can happen to anyone of us at any time.
Joined: Apr '09
Location: Portugal
Age: 44 (M)
Posts: 4827
Greg Merson didn't managed to keep the leadership always since there were only three players left, after all the chipleader changed several times when they were still three. And it took more time to define the final HU than to find the winner. That final hand shows what a winner is made of, puting that much pressure with a suited K5, i bet we can't find any online school telling anyone to do such thing, but he sure did well, taking in consideration he won.
Joined: Jun '11
Location: Romania
Age: 38 (M)
Posts: 1
It was a perfectly good call given the range he puts Merson on (a lot of smaller pairs mostly and he's even OK against a hand like Ace-Ten, in case he's wrong, plus king-highs seem very unlikely) AND the situation in the tournament (he's clearly the short stack and up against an obviously better player who's dominated him heads-up). He HAS to gamble there because he's not likely to get the better of Merson in the long grind, and given how much money there is in the pot already. 35 big blinds is not enough to fold these hands and wait for a better spot, not heads-up for sure. A better spot than this will NOT present itself against such a good player... Besides, to quote Merson himself (from the post-win interview with Kristy Arnett): "I don't think Jesse's call was bad" - that's the current World Champion and Player of the Year talking there, and he didn't HAVE to say that. Trust me, he means it!
------------ Oh yeah, and in more detail by Merson: “When I saw his hand, I just couldn’t believe that I had the best hand,” said Merson. “But I don’t think it’s a bad call by him, because I would ship all of my small pairs and ace-x suited hands. He was getting the right price.” http://www.bluff.com/news/greg-merson-wins-the-2012-wor...
Edited by acmilan03c1 (01 November 2012 @ 12:04 GMT)
Joined: Oct '11
Location: Germany
Age: 38 (M)
Posts: 154
I think he deserved it very well, he was definetly the best player at the FT. I found the last hand a bit suspicious, in the whole HU wasnt really that much of raising and rerasising going on and suddenly merson makes a 3 bet shove with K5 suited and Sylvia makes the call. For me it seems a bit like they maybe made a deal befor the HU began,because they were allready really exhausted after nearly 12 hours of 3 handed play
