A Legend Gone, A Legend Making
by Court on 09.30.09, 5:53 pm
To the dismay of many around the Casino at the Empire Doyle Brunson was eliminated shortly after players returned from dinner break. Doyle moved all in after Negreanu had opened a pot but James Akenhead was still left to act behind Doyle and called with AK. Doyle was making a move with Q9 but was drawing live and on the queen high flop it looked like Brunson was going to double up and continue to battle for another bracelet. A king on the turn flipped things back the other way and the jack on the river was no help to Doyle who was sidelined in 17th place.
Other than the elimination of Doyle (right) the story of after dinner play has been the same as it was right before dinner break: Jason “treysfull21″ Mercier. He has been relentless, attacking his closest competitor in chips until he had decimated Saar Wilf’s stack and left him vulnerable to elimination. Three bets pre, and raises on all streets and a 3 bet shove on the turn after Wilf made it 250k all contributed to putting 2 million plus chips in Mercier’s stack and leaving Wilf with many less chips than the 1.1 million he left behind when he went to dinner.
After losing pot after pot to Mercier there were still enough chips in Wilf’s stack to put the tournament life of Antione Saout on the line, and Wilf had Saout in jail with his pocket sevens crushing the pocket fives for Saout after the two got all in preflop for over 300k each. The flop did nothing for either player but a five on the turn caused the frustration in Wilf to flow out as he agitatedly jumped up from his seat, visibly distraught. He walked back over to the table as the river came out, but there was not seven to rescue him and all he could do was shake his head in frustration as the 300k+ chips were taken from his stack and slid to Saout.
That left Wilf short stacked and he was all in and all out only a short time later. Who finished him off? None other than Jason Mercier. From the small blind Mercier bet enough to cover the small amount Wilf had remaining and Saar made the call with 9-7. Jason had A-7 and an ace on the turn locked it up for him and locked Saar Wilf into a 16th place finish for 31,198 GBP.
In a pair versus two overcards race Barry Shulman was able to knock Ran Vaswani out in 15th place when his pair held up. Shulman has now cracked the 1 million chip mark but trails well behind Mercier and his over 2 million and growing stack. After Vaswani was knocked out the next casualty was again from the other table and at the hands of… you guessed it, Jason Mercier. This time local soccer (football here in London) legend Teddy Sheringham was the one that had to send the last of his chips to Mr. Mercier. Teddy was all in with KQ and dominated by the AK that had been clamped under Mercier’s left hand. The board ran out with no help for Teddy, and 
an ace for good measure for Mercier and with that Sheringham earned the distinction of a 14th place finish in the World Series of Poker Europe presented by Betfair. He also gets 40,481 GBP for the effort but from what the folks around here are saying that is a drop in the bucket to Sheringham after all his soccer (football here) success.
Pictured Left: One of the many chip stacks that has been added to the mound in front of Mercier.
Mercier keeps pushing his stack higher and higher, both numerically and in actual height and right now the total value of his stack is around 2.5 million. He picks up chips about as fast as I can type though so by the time I finish this sentence he may have another player or two on the rail. For now all Eric “P3achy_keen” Liu and the other players at his table can do is sit back, watch and hope to not get caught up in the carnage.
