– General Information –
Jason Mercier is an American professional poker player. He was born on November 12th, 1986 in Hollywood, FL.
He has five WSOP gold bracelets and one WSOP Player of the Year award. He’s also won a European Poker Tour title, and has a vast number of victories in various high rollers under his belt. Mercier regularly appeared on CBS Sports’ poker show Poker Night in America.
He’s married to Natasha Mercier who also plays high buy-in poker tournaments. She often voices her support to her husband whenever he gets into online feuds.
– Key Career Dates –
- 2004: He starts playing online poker.
- 2009: He wins his first WSOP bracelet in the $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha event for $237,415.
- 2014: He comes in second in the $100K Super High Roller at the Bellagio for $1.622 million. That is his biggest single live tournament cash to date.
- 2016: He wins the WSOP Player of the Year award.
- 2017: Wins the $25,500 Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown High-Roller for $794,600
- 2019: Wins the $50,000 Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open – Super High Roller for $715,860
– Jason Mercier’s Career –
→ Beginnings ←
Mercier, an avid sports fan as a teenager, was studying at the Florida Atlantic University to become a math teacher. That is until he found poker.
According to an interview he gave to pokerlisting.com, he was a winning player from the very start.
“I started in 2004, just after I turned 18. I was basically winning from the beginning, but of course I played only very small stakes. I slowly moved up to middle and then high stakes, but I always kept building my bankroll” – reminisced Mercier about his early days at the virtual felt.
After just a year in college, he dropped out to pursue playing cards for a living. While he wasn’t making enough to sustain himself, he even worked in a grocery store. Evidently, Mercier eventually managed to make enough money at the tables to go professional.
→ Live Tournaments ←
Jason Mercier exploded into the live tournament scene with his victory at the 2008 Sanremo EPT Main Event. The buy-in was €5,000 for the tournament but Mercier got in through a satellite. He eventually beat the field and won €869,000. Before that, he didn’t even have any live tournament scores on his Hendon page.
Evidently, that changed. Now he has over $19.6 million in live tournament earnings with 166 individual cashes.
Mercier won a second EPT title in 2008. In London, he took down the £20,000 High Roller for £516,000. He also finished 2nd in a €100,000 Super High Roller EPT event in Monte Carlo for €1,115,700 in 2013.
He has two titles from the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open. One from 2017, when he won the $25K event for $794,600; and one from 2019, when he won the $50K event for $715,860.
In 2011, Jason Mercier won the $100K tournament at the Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic series for $709,767.
His biggest live tournament score to date comes from June 2014. He came in 2nd in a $100,000 Super High Roller held at the Bellagio. He lost the heads-up battle for the title to Dan Smith, and had to be contented with “just” the $1.622 million second place prize money.
→ World Series of Poker ←
Mercier is one of the 10 players with 5 World Series bracelets to his name, and is among the only 26 players with 5 bracelets or more.
Overall, he cashed in WSOP events 62 times for a combined $4,221,505.
He won his first bracelet in 2009, in the $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha event for $237,415. His second WSOP title came in 2011, when he won the $5,000 6-Handed Pot Limit Omaha event for $619,575.
In 2015, he won the $5,000 6-Handed No Limit Hold’em tournament for $633,357. The next year, in 2016, he took home two more bracelets. He came in first in the $10,000 2-7 No Limit Draw Lowball Championship and in the $10,000 H.O.R.S.E Championship. He got $273,335 and $422,874 for those two victories, respectively.
On top of his impressive 5 golden bracelets, he has a runner-up finish in the 2015 $10K Pot Limit Omaha event for which he earned $572,989 and another 2nd place finish in the 2016 $10K Razz event for $168,936.
In 2016, he won the World Series’ Player of the Year award. That year, he won two bracelets, finished 2nd place once and made another final table at the WSOP.
→ Live Cash Games ←
The 32-year-old American poker pro is a regular feature on Poker Night in America’s shows. He appeared in 7 episodes so far in two different seasons.
Whenever he plays on that show, the commentators like to point out how much money he tends to win in those cash games. PNIA cash games are usually $25/$50 NLHE.
Mercier also made appearances on the last two seasons of High Stakes Poker, The Game Show Network’s classic poker show. There, he played against the likes of Doyle Brunson, Phil Hellmuth, Daniel Negreanu and Tom Dwan at $300/$600 stakes with a $100 ante.
→ Online Poker ←
Mercier plays under the screen name “JasonMercier” on PokerStars and “treysfull21” on Full Tilt. Between those two accounts, he has $2.261 million in MTT cashes according to the online poker tournament database PocketFives.
The first recorded ITM finish on his profile is from April 2009. He finished 6th in a $150 tourney on Full Tilt for $2,595. The first time he made an online cash more than $10,000 was in May 2009. He came in 13th out of a field of 795 players in a $2,500 Full Tilt Online Poker Series (FTOPS) event for $14,000.
Given the fact that Mercier himself claims he started playing online poker around 2004, it is very likely he used different, untracked accounts before the ones listed above. However, these are the first results of his that are available to the public.
Mercier has won 2 WCOOP (World Championship of Online Poker) events as well as 5 SCOOP (Spring Championship of Online Poker) events – three in 2015 alone – on PokerStars.
During the Corona crisis in 2020 Mercier became an online WPT side event champion by taking down the $10k Online PLO High Roller on partypoker for $279,265.
His biggest online MTT payday is for one of his WCOOP victories. In September 2010, he managed to beat a 3,122-player field in the $1,050 event and claim the title along with the $491,715 first prize.
However, in cash games, he’s down over $500K after 87,000 hands on PokerStars, according to a website that tracks high stakes online cash results.
Didn’t really wanna win this pot anyways … GG wcoop pic.twitter.com/vgeHid7Z9x
— Jason Mercier (@JasonMercier) September 10, 2018
→ Sponsorships ←
Mercier was a Team PokerStars sponsored pro from 2008 to 2018. He decided not to renew his contract at the end of 2017 due to most of his time being consumed by his newborn son, as he wrote in a blogpost on PS’s website.
→ Scandals ←
His feud with Doug Polk
In May 2016, Doug Polk was streaming a high stakes cash game session he was playing on PokerStars. Among his opponents at that virtual table was Jason Mercier.
The viewers of that stream noticed that Mercier is tagged as a “bad reg” – indicating that Polk thinks Mercier’s a bad player, despite his accolades on the live tournament scene.
Both Mercier and his wife Natasha got word of this and they publicly denounced Polk on Twitter.
OFC cheating allegations against Fernando Rosas
In February 2017, Mercier took to the 2+2 Forums to level accusations of cheating at Fernando “relaxursoul” Rosas.
Allegedly, Rosas was either botting or manipulating the deal in a Pineapple Open Face Chinese Poker app many high stakes poker pros were playing at the time, including Mercier. They noticed that Rosas has a conspicuously high win rate despite the fact that when they were playing OFC against him live, he wasn’t very good.
Here’s some excerpts of Mercier’s allegations from his 2+2 post – once again, his wife Natasha is involved:
“Why I think u are somehow cheating (…) No one beats u on the app =… ). U can’t win live- lost at pca. Lost in Vegas. Lost to Natasha in 5 different forms of ofc live (…) Natasha has told me massive mistakes you have made live.”
– Jason Mercier on Social Media –
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/realjasonmercier/ 46,500 followers Twitter: https://twitter.com/jasonmercier 135,500 followers
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