The World Poker Tour Alpha8 was held on the St. Kitts Island a few days ago. It took 2 days for the winner to be announced. His name is Jason Mercier and he was awarded the sum of $727,500 for his first place.
A total of 15 players paid the $100,000 buy-in fee so as to be able to take part in the event. Thus, a prize pool of $1,455,000 was created.
Mercier, who is a Team PokerStars Pro, has previously won two gold bracelets from World Series of Poker events. And this is his first WPT Alpha8 title.
A total of nine players returned for Day 2 of the event. Only the first three out of those nine were to be paid, which meant that all other six players went home with empty pockets.
Daniel Colman was the first to be eliminated. Despite his ninth place at the WPT Alpha8, his performance during 2014 was excellent. The poker pro had won a total of $22,389,481 from various tournaments.
Colman was followed by Talal Shakerchi and Alec Torelli, who finished eighth and seventh respectively. At this stage of the game, it was Olivier Busquet who held the majority of chips and Mercier was in second place.
Then, Bill Perkins was defeated by Busquet to take the sixth position. On Hand #40, the latter was hit by Kathy Lehne. Although he managed to maintain his chip lead even after the female poker pro’s attack, the game became quite difficult for him. And on Hand #58, Tony Guglietti replaced Busquet as the chip leader.
Yet another player had to leave the final table. This time it was Antonio Esfandiari and he was eliminated by Lehne on Hand #65.
Then, Busquet was sent home by the soon-to-be-champion. On Hand #77, he had [Ad][Jd] and Mercier had [Kc][Qc].
and it was his time to leave the final table.
With Busquet’s elimination, it became clear that the prize pool would be divided between Tony Guglietti, Kathy Lehne, and Jason Mercier.
At the beginning of the three-handed play, it was Lehne who held the majority of chips. She had a total of 826,000, Mercier had 348,000, and Guglietti had 326,000. During the next 40 hands, Mercier managed to catch up, but Guglietti did not do that well. Eventually, he was eliminated by his male opponent on Hand #117. He took the amount of $291,000 for his third place.
Thus, Mercier became the chip leader, holding a total of 825,000 in chips at the beginning of the heads-up play.
Hand #151 became the last one. Lehne had [10h][8d]
in her hand and her opponent held [As][Ac]. With the board showing [Qd][Qc][5h][7s][8h], the name of the new champion became clear.
The female poker pro took $436,500 for her runner-up position. As for Mercier, he was awarded the sum of $727,500. Thus, his winnings for this year reached over $3.67 million.
