It was the first time that PokerStars had organized a High Roller event in conjunction with the European Poker Tour (EPT).

The venue was the Grosvenor Victoria Casino, London, and the event was held on the 5th and 6th of October just after the completion of the London stop of the EPT.

The event, which has been billed as the £1 Million Showdown, had a buy-in of £20,000. The star-studded field of 86 included Team PokerStars Pros in full force. Victoria Coren, Barry Greenstein, Joe Hachem, Isabelle Mercier, Dario Minieri, Chris Moneymaker and Daniel Negreanu were all there.  Also playing were the six PokerStars Million Dollar Men. These are the PokerStars players who will be playing in the WSOP Main Event final in November. Other professionals included Gus Hansen, Chris Ferguson, David Benyamine, Patrik Antonius, Phil Ivey and John Juanda. 

It stands to reason that the final table was equally star-studded with three WSOP bracelet winners. Dennis Phillips just failed to make the final table of nine. He also got eliminated on the bubble because only the final table players cashed. The first to be knocked out from the final table was the only woman, Isabelle Mercier. She was nicknamed ‘No Mercy’ by commentator Mike Sexton after she came first in a WPT Ladies Night Out event in 2004. But she has done little since then to justify this pseudonym. The best she has achieved was a fifth place in 2007. Several poker blogs claim that she is dating fellow PokerStars team Dario Minieri and the two were seen to get more than cozy at the PokerStars party during WSOP 2008. 

David Benyamine finished eighth. Like Isabelle he is dating a poker player Erica Shoenberg. He won his first WSOP bracelet this June. Since then he is more in the news for high stakes cash games at RailHeaven table at Full Tilt Poker where he has featured in some big pots, almost became the first player to reach a stack of a million dollars in an online games and has had verbal spats with Jay “pr1nnyraid” Rosenkrantz. In seventh place was Masaaki Kagawa from Japan and sixth was Isaac Haxton.

Scotty Nguyen finished fifth. Nguyen have five WSOP bracelets to his name but a reputation that belies his achievements. In the H.O.R.S.E. event that gave him his last bracelet he came close to being disqualified under a number of tournament rules for abusive behavior and collusion. Fourth and third were Peter Jetten and Michael Watson from Canada.

The runner up was John Juanda. Juanda had recently won the WSOPE London event and thus narrowly lost out on getting a unique double. Juanda has four WSOP bracelets to his name. Juanda had needed 22 hours to win his head up in the WSOPE event but lost fairly soon here. Though he had a 2 to 1 chip lead going into the heads up he lost to Jason Mercier. He lost the lead in the very first deal and was out soon thereafter. In the final deal Mercier had K and Q to Juanda’s A and J. When the flop came 9, 10 and J Juanda’s fate was sealed. Incidentally Mercier won the San Remo EPT (Season 4) in April 2008 with the same pocket cards.

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