Max Altergott raised from the button to to 100,000 and Mike Watson moved all in from the big blind with for just onder a million chips. Altergott folded his cards and Watson took down the pot without showdown.
A dream start for Mike Watson as he doubled up the second hand.
He started with less than ten big blinds and had no time to hang around. He was under the gun and moved all in and was called by Scott Seiver in the big blind.
Today is the final day of Season 9 of the PokerStars European Poker Tour, and it caps off with a bang as the 2013 PokerStars and Monte-Carlo® Casino EPT Grand Final €100,000 Super High Roller comes to a close.
This day plans to be an epic one, as seven Super High Rollers are fighting for the €1,746,400 first-place prize. Team PokerStars Pro Jason Mercier leads the pack with a third of all the chips in play, but it's far from over. The seven remaining players are all very accomplished with a good chance to taking the title down. For a little more information on each of them, scroll down below and view the player profiles.
All seven players left have locked up at least €218,300, so no one will be going home empty handed. Stay tuned right here to PokerNews.com for the live coverage to begin shortly.
Canadian Timothy Adams used to focus his skills online, where he is commonly known as "Tim0thee." Thanks to some friendly advice from fellow poker player Tristan Wade, Adams has started making more and more trips to live events around the world, and it's proven to be a decision that has really paid off.
Altogether in 2012, Adams cashed in five WSOP events. The event he won — $2,500 Four-Handed No-Limit Hold'em — earned him $392,476. He bubbled the final table of the $10,000 Six-Handed No-Limit Hold'em later in the Series, winning $100,696, and then ran deep in the WSOP Main Event, which was good for a 52nd-place finish for $52,718.
Adams will begin the final table fifth in chips with 830,000, and he spent a fair amount of the tournament as one of the shorter stacks in the field. Getting into the money has earned Adams the second largest score of his young poker career, but he won't be happy settling for just a min-cash here.
Just days prior at this 2013 PokerStars and Monte-Carlo® Casino European Poker Tour Grand Final, Adams took fifth in the €10,000 No-Limit Hold'em Six-Handed Turbo side event for €28,200.
Sorel Mizzi can be a polarizing figure to many, having been involved in a few controversies, but also being a very successful poker player with nearly $5 million in live tournament earnings. In fact, this final table pushes Mizzi over the $5 million mark for his live career.
While Mizzi may have done things he has regretted in the past, he took ownership of his mistakes in a blog post written at the end of 2012 and has been working on becoming a better person. Now, that better person looks to win a lot of money in the 2013 PokerStars and Monte-Carlo® Casino European Poker Tour Grand Final €100,000 Super High Roller.
All other things aside, it's hard to argue against Mizzi's stout tournament record. Since his first live result in 2006, Mizzi has never cashed for less than $450,000 in a year. His best year was in 2010 when he won nearly $1.9 million thanks to a few big scores.
In January 2010, Mizzi final tabled the Aussie Millions Main Event and took third place for AU$715,000. He won the Borgata Spring Poker Open for $170,313 later that year in April before netting two more six-figure cashes at the EPT Grand Final and World Poker Tour Rendez-Vous à Paris.
The largest outright win of Mizzi's career came in 2011 when he won the WPT Rendez-Vous à Paris €15,000 High Roller event for €234,495. He's also made a handful of World Series of Poker final tables over the years.
Mizzi will enter the final table third in chips with 2.14 million, and he's right in the middle of the bunch that involves Vladimir Troyanovsky with 2.15 million and Max Altergott with 2.11 million.
Vladimir Troyanovsky has burst onto the poker scene here in 2013. He began frequenting more live poker events throughout Europe in 2012 and came across the PokerNews radar most prominently at the World Series of Poker Europe when he made two deep runs. First, he took 10th place in the €10,000 Mixed-Max No-Limit Hold'em for €20,443, and then he placed 27th in the start-studded €10,000 Main Event for €22,982.
While more and more Russians are exploding onto the poker scene as of late, Troyanovsky's big bang came at the 2013 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure back in January. He earned over $1 million at that event thanks to two very large scores in the biggest events on the festival's schedule, the $100,000 Super High Roller and the $25,000 High Roller. In the former, Troyanovsky placed seventh for $257,580. He then finished runner-up to Team PokerStars Pro Vanessa Selbst in the latter for $792,180.
In February, Troyanovsky earned the third outright win of his career and the largest of the trio by taking down the €5,000 6-Max No-Limit Hold'em Turbo side event at the European Poker Tour's stop in Deauville for €51,000.
Troyanovsky will enter this final table second in chips, but heavily bunched together with Sorel Mizzi in third place and Max Altergott in fourth.
Last year, it was Justin Bonomo's name popping up all over the PokerStars and Monte-Carlo® Casino European Poker Tour Grand Final. This year, it's Team PokerStars Pro Jason Mercier who is taking the entire festival by storm.
To begin the series, Mercier won the €2,150 OPen-Face Chinese Poker event for €48,000, a game he is widely considered the best player in. To follow that up, Mercier final tabled the €10,000 Main Event and won another €137,000 after finishing in seventh place. Now, he's the chip leader entering the €100,000 Super High Roller final table by more than 2 million in chips.
Mercier will be the first to admit that he didn't have the best 2012, as evidence by this entry on the PokerStars Blog, but that hasn't deterred him from buckling down and pushing even harder this year. In fact, by making the money here in this event, Mercier has already made more in 2013 than he cashed for in the entire year of 2012. Given the sizable chip lead he holds, that number only looks like it's going to increase.
While Mercier is no stranger to the felt, momentum and confidence can mean a lot in poker. Despite a lack-luster 2012, this EPT Grand Final serves as a big, fat "I'm back!" calling for Mercier to the rest of the poker world, and it's coming at just the right time of the year.
Following his finish here — whatever that ends up being — Mercier plans to grind as many PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker events as he can before jetting off to Las Vegas for the $25,000 World Poker Tour Championship and $100,000 Super High Roller. After those events, he'll hop back on a plane, leave the United States to grind the final events of SCOOP, and then return for the start of the 2013 WSOP. It's all about the "mashing" this year for Mercier, as he pushes harder to recover from last year's bashing.
Digging around online, it's hard to find much about Max Altergott, who enters the final table fourth in chips with 2.11 million. When you've got the defending World Series of Poker Main Event champion tweeting about you, though, you must be someone of notoriety.
Greg Merson tweeted the following yesterday: "Anyone watching ept live, this kid max altergott is one of the best I've ever played in hsnl online games #altifc #endboss"
Altergott is know as "altiFC" online and a regular in some of the largest games in the world, focusing the majority of his energy on high-stakes cash games. In 2011, though, Alergott took fourth in the PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker $10,300 High Main Event for $369,581.04. Outside of that, there isn't much to be found in terms of records, as Altergott has opted to keep these private from many tracking sites, which is completely in his right.
We can tell you that Altergott late-registered this event and is new to the world of Super High Roller events, but he may just be making more appearances following this result here. He's already locked up €218,300, but with a hefty chip stack in his possession, that could result in much more for the German.
Scott Seiver is the second shortest stack returning to action today, but like Mike Watson, no one will be wanting to see him double up or start gaining any momentum towards a comeback. With $7.3 million in live tournament earnings, Seiver is one of the most successful players in the world.
For Seiver, he's already having his best year on the live felt, and it's only halfway through May with so much of the year left to come. He's earned over $2.3 million, with the bulk of that coming from the $100,000 Super High Roller at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in January that he won to the tune of $2 million. The year prior at the PCA, Seiver had some success as well, winning the $5,000 Heads-Up Event for $78,210 and finishing fifth in the $5,000 8-Game Event for $13,810.
While Seiver is a recognizable face in today's poker world and a regular at the highest stakes around, many either forget or seem to not know that he is also a World Series of Poker gold bracelet winner from back in 2008. At the Series that summer, Seiver defeated David Seidman heads up in the $5,000 No-Limit Hold'em event to take $755,891.
We mentioned that Seiver has over $2.3 million in earnings this year and the bulk of that came from his massive score at PCA, but you may be asking where the rest of the cash has been earned. Well, Seiver placed third in the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship in January for $100,000, cashed twice in World Poker Tour events, twice at European Poker Tour London in side events and twice at EPT Berlin.
to 100,000 and Mike Watson moved all in from the big blind with 
for just onder a million chips. Altergott folded his cards and Watson took down the pot without showdown.
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