Knowing the languid American-turned-Irishman to be one of the more interesting conversationalists in the game, we at the PokerStars Blog were keenly anticipating what O'Dwyer would have to say after finally claiming his title, closing out such a legendary line up. What quip or sardonic comment would tumble out of the new champ's mouth? We leaned forward in our chairs to get closer to the press room monitor.

"I feel great, but I feel really, really tired. That was gruelling," said O'Dwyer.

Sure, but what else? Come on, give us some magic.

Onscreen, EPT Live webcast presenter Joe Stapleton teed O'Dwyer up by asking him what it felt like to have beaten the best final table in history. We were now at tipping point across our desks.

"I don't know. I'm in shock. I have no words," he replied.

That was not what we were expecting. To be fair to O'Dwyer, the four-time EPT final tablist had just beaten an astounding roster of players which included some of the biggest names in the game; Daniel Negreanu, Jake Cody, Johnny Lodden, Jason Mercier, Andrew Pantling, Noah Schwartz and Grant Levy. It's kind of understandable that you might be in shock (let alone factoring in that gigantic seven-figure score). You can read the full EPT Grand Final report here.

A mental note was made to grill him later.

Awake and a million richer
Two days along we caught up with O'Dwyer while the newly crowned champ of European poker was late regging for a late festival €1,100 turbo rebuy (you can find out who won what by clicking here). He looked refreshed, he looked happy and he wanted a cup of tea, which will come as no surprise to anyone that's played with O'Dwyer: he carries around expensive looking vacuum packs of tea in one pocket and a tilted plastic tea strainer in the other.

As he ripped open a pack and started brewing, he said, "I invented this game in Barcelona where you accuse lots of random people of being Illuminati. There was some big conference going on, I don't know what it was for, but there were all these older, very well dressed secret lizard people. They were flooding the Hotel Arts and we were walking round the lobby just going 'Illuminati, Illuminati, Illuminati, Illuminati,' to all of them. That's my new favourite game," said O'Dwyer, flicking his strainer dry.

The Illuminati is a name that has been given to many groups and so-called secret societies, both real and imaginary. In this case, they were imagined and reptilian. This was the kind of gold we had been hoping for. Now O'Dwyer had been allowed a chance to recuperate and let his achievement sink in he could give the winner's interview we knew he could.

"It's just really overwhelming. I've spent the last day and a half doing nothing but respond to messages of support and I haven't even got close to responding to everyone. It's awesome. It's also really weird," said O'Dwyer, who said of beating the incredible line-up, "It makes it more special. It's nice to be a part of history. This is a final table that people are going to remember for a long time, I think."

He was correct on both fronts. That final table has gone down in the record books as the best ever, if we say so ourselves, and people could not stop congratulating him. In the course of our 20-minute interview no less than three people stopped by to tip their hat to O'Dwyer: "Every time I've had lunch or dinner multiple people have come up to say congrats. Some have been asking for autographs and photos which is really unfamiliar and very strange," he said, obviously a little uncomfortable with the notion.

Whether O'Dwyer wants it or not, the backslapping is much deserved. He's been an impressive force on the EPT for the last couple of seasons making four final tables and riding high on the leaderboard during both. No matter what O'Dwyer did, whether he tried to perfect that final table button limp or not, things didn't quite work out for him at the end. Sure he got to make a deal with Benny Spindler heads-up at EPT London for a huge score, but the title remained out of reach.

"This time I was more familiar with the feeling of how it could all just disappear if you lose just one coin-flip so I was a little less scared by the thought of not winning. The London final table was really tough but this one was off the charts," he said.

"My plan was to take it easy for the first hour or two hours and see how people were playing. I had an idea of how I thought Daniel (Negreanu), Noah (Schwartz) and Andrew (Pantling) would all play but I wanted to see what dynamics would develop before I got involved. I didn't want to play any really bad hands or make loose raises in those first few hours so I could set a tight image that I was trying to ladder up. Also, I wanted to give myself a chance to see what hands were coming in," said O'Dwyer.

This wasn't simply a case of hoping to catch aces or kings. The final table was being streamed on EPT Live 'cards up' on a one-hour delay so that people at home could see the hole cards.

Dream team
"I didn't know going in that we were playing cards-up. I got someone to relay the hands to me and once I saw what hands people were playing I could decide who to attack. Justin Bonomo was relaying. He stayed in and watched the live stream. Once we got heads-up Justin had to go to dinner and Ike (Haxton) took over. Ike was the back up."

So your go-to guy is one of the best tournament players in the world who has $5,948,720 in live tournament results and won the €100,000 Super High Roller at the same festival the season before. Your back up, who steps in for the short -handed action, is the player who is recognised as one of the best and most consistent high stakes cash games players in the world, the guy who won more than €1 million in a cash game a couple of days before. Well, that hardly seems fair.

"I don't think it's fair at all. I really don't like it. I've been pretty vocal about that. I think if they're going to do it, it should be on an even longer delay, but it's just something that you have to deal with. If you want to play these big tournaments sometimes the organiser wants to stream it with hole cards face up. I don't think it's that good for the game. Maybe I'm wrong. I like the broadcasts when they're face down with world class players in there giving expert commentary. I think it's far more interesting talking about what their ranges are, what ranges they're putting each other on as opposed to what they should do."

All that said, it's not as if Pantling was some unsuspecting sucker. The Canadian had around $1 million in live tournament winnings and a lot of online experience behind him. O'Dwyer certainly holds a lot of respect for him: "He's a world class player and he's played a lot higher stakes in short-handed games than I have ever played. He's been one of the biggest winners for years and years and years until he basically retired."

Numbers, jumps and binks
When the action was three-handed between O'Dwyer, Pantling and Team PokerStars Pro Johnny Lodden there had been a discussion about 'numbers', a potential chopping of the prize pool. The conversation had not lasted long as Pantling, the chip leader at that point, had made it clear that he wasn't interested in making a deal. When Lodden bust out to O'Dwyer, mainly thanks to being on the wrong side of a huge and somewhat curious flip with queen-ten losing to pocket sixes in a five-bet shoved pot, the American-Irishman sidled up to Pantling and somewhat sheepishly asked about a deal again.

"I just wanted to double check and make sure that he didn't want to chop three-handed but that he might heads-up. I wasn't expecting him to say yes but I wanted to see, just in case. For me there's no reason to play for that amount of money if I don't have to.* If I can secure extra money then of course I'm going to go for it, which is why I was really happy to chop with Benny in London two years ago. It didn't happen this time and I'm really happy it didn't because it worked out better for me."

*There was a difference of €382,000 between winner and runner-up.

O'Dwyer's approach to chopping doesn't come as a surprise. He's calm and grounded, there are no macho outbursts, no tossing cards at the dealers, nor insults at his opponents. He understands the game and its swings, and understands that you can run hot or cold. Although everyone loves the top line of a seven-figure score, its recipient, particularly tour pros, very infrequently pockets it all themselves due to swap and chops, dealing and staking. O'Dwyer declined to put a figure on it, but did smile.

"I did quite alright. I had a good amount of make-up coming into this. I probably needed about top four or five, something like that. It was like London, I needed a really good result to get out of make-up," he said.

Another big score down you'd think that perhaps his staking days are in the past. Not necessarily.

"We haven't really discussed that. In smaller events, like this $1k rebuy, I'll definitely take 100% of myself. In the past I've been backed for everything because it's so convenient. It made keeping track of tournament results so easy, it all went on the stake. I didn't have to differentiate. Now I think that I'll play some of these things on my own. There's no amount of money that can withstand the variance you need to play these big events, which is why everyone pools their money together."

Talking Japanese
O'Dwyer also had some other expenses to make good on, thanks to some savvy prop betting by JC Alvarado.

"I have to fund a trip to Toyko for JC Alvarado and King Dan (Smith). I made a swap with JC in London after we'd been talking about how we'd never been to Japan before and that we really wanted to go. I don't know how we got on the subject but we decided to make a swap that if either of us won the Grand Final we would play for the other's flights, hotel and tickets over New Year's where there's a massive MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) fight called Dynamite. This is always a huge thing, like eight hours of fights with a lot of really serious fights, but then a lot of funny freak show type things, like you have a 180 pound Japanese guy fighting a 300 pound Brazilian. All kinds of awesome stuff. We agreed on that and I then found out on Day 3 of the Main Event that JC had extended the swap to Dan to make it a three-way swap. It's now turned into a big thing where a whole bunch of us are going to go."

That's still some way off yet. There's a few small things to get out the way first, like the Guangdong Asia Millions taking place in Macau, Season 10 of the EPT starting in Barcelona and, of course, the World Series of Poker. You can read about some of the people playing the $130,000 buy-in event here.

"I'm going to go to play the tournament in Macau. That's going to be amazing. Me, Dan Smith and Ike (Haxton). Scott is probably going. Justin might go. Tony Gregg will be there. It's going to be a very exciting tournament."

Pulling no punches
The GDAM clashes with the start of the WSOP, but O'Dwyer doesn't seem too bothered about that. Far from it.

"Yeah, but I was already planning on skipping most of the World Series because I've had terrible results there and I don't particularly like Vegas. I really don't like the Rio, it's not a fun place to play poker. When you go deep in a big event the excitement that surrounds it is a lot of fun but it's not a well-run operation; the dealers suck, the floor sucks, they treat you like shit, there's no good food, everything is insanely expensive, the rake is ridiculous, you have to wait in massive lines," said O'Dwyer.

It's safe to say that O'Dwyer is a European Poker Tour convert, which is just as well given that he upped sticks from the US to Ireland (and his $4,840,796 in live winnings would rocket him to the top of the all-time money list for Ireland).

"This is infinitely better. PokerStars events are run professionally and they are very kind to everybody. At the Rio they can be really rude and they do not like to listen to suggestions of players whereas here I can just go up to Neil Johnson (PokerStars Live Poker Specialist) and say, 'Neil, this is what I think. What are your thoughts?' and we can have an hour-long discussion if he's not busy. That is not the case at the Rio where I've never found anyone to listen to me for more than five minutes before being told, 'Alright, enough, I've got stuff to do.' They don't really care about your opinion."

O'Dwyer, who has been coined The Hairy Beast by the EPT Live webcast team, has a habit of picking up nicknames. He's got millions of them, he claims, such as Tea Steve, Big Time Steve, World Champion of Floating Steve... World Champion of Floating Steve?

"Yeah, I won the World Champion of Floating in Vegas in 2009. I've never had another challenge so haven't had to run it again. It was a heads-up match against JC Alvarado and he didn't even come close to beating me. I had no problem floating in the pool at Panorama Towers in Vegas much longer than he did. He gave up and I showed off for another 10 or 15 minutes."

You may have some difficulty beating O'Dwyer at the poker table but here's a challenge you might stand a chance of beating him at.

"Maybe someone out there wants to give me a floating challenge."

Floats up for rolls.

Rick Dacey is a staff writer for the PokerStars Blog.

It marks the first major cash for the German, who was largely unknown before he registered late to play what is rightly billed as one of the most exclusive events in world poker. High stakes cash games are evidently his thing, but his transition to high stakes tournaments has been seamless, beating crowd favourite Jason Mercier heads-up to the title.

Max Altergott on his way to the title

When we say crowd favourite, we mean of the half a dozen high rollers who made regular appearances on the rail to watch the final seven players play down to a winner in a tournament room slowing down after a busy nine days.

All smiles but Mercier falls short

For the players it began at 1pm, while the world outside Monaco watched the EPT Live coverage an hour later, put together by none other than a few award winners.

The TV crew in action

Short stacks Mike Watson and Scott Seiver were quickly pressed into action, doubling up to survive the first hour, before departing in seventh and sixth place respectively. The Russian Vladimir Troyanovsky busted in fifth place, while Timothy Adams followed him in fourth, details of which can be found on our live coverage page.

Scott Seiver needed help from somewhere, but got none

After a deal was nixed, play continued three-handed, with Sorel Mizzi, a one-time chip leader, sparring with both Mercier and Altergott before his tournament came to an end in third place, his king-queen dethroned by Altergott's pocket jacks.

Out in third - Sorrel Mizzi

It left only a short heads-up duel to wrap things up, Altergott, once in front, never permitted his chip lead to slip, denying Mercier his 15th live tournament win in the process. Mercier had come out worst in a big hand with a pair and a turned flush draw against Altergott's over pair. It effectively decided the tournament.

Mercier got his last chips in with ten-six of diamonds, which Altergott called with jack-nine off-suit. While Mercier paired his six on the flop, the turn and river filled a straight for Altergott. It's a result arguably tinged with anti-climax, at least if you like your winners well-known. But Altergott has made it obvious that his first title was earned by hard graft and talent, and a Super High Roller win is a guaranteed fast track into the poker spotlight.

Altergott triumphs

It brings to an end the three day tournament that attracted 50 entries, and the end of a nine day festival that attracted hundreds more.

It started last week with the €10,000 main event that gradually became the tour's most memorable, with a final table line-up that will for a long time be considered the best in history - won by Steve O'Dwyer. Prior to that the €25,000 High Roller event was claimed by Steven Silverman, one of 50 side event winners from the festival that you can find on the side event results page.

It also concludes the ninth season of the EPT, following stops in Barcelona, Sanremo, Prague, the PCA, Deauville, London, Berlin and here in Monaco. It had a new look and a new appeal and thousands of players took part in what are the best tournaments anywhere in the world. Now, the wait for Season 10 begins.

Former baseball commissioner Bart Giammati once famously wrote of how baseball breaks your heart. "It blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings", he said, and then, "it leaves you to face the fall alone."

The Monte Carlo Bay Hotel

Perhaps it's not quite as stark for poker, the seasons are reversed and there's a plentiful supply of games to be played somewhere, not least online or on the UKIPT which starts again in June. But it does make you wonder where the time went, and long to do it all again.

Thanks to everyone who has read our coverage throughout the season, and taken the time to contact us. We shall return for Season 10 starting in Barcelona in August, where this whole thing starts once more for what will be the tour's tenth anniversary.

For now, have a good summer, and goodbye from Monaco.

EPT9 Grand Final, Super High Roller
Date: 13-15 May, 2013
Buy-in: €100,000
Game: NLHE
Players: 41 (+9 re-entries)
Prize pool: €4,851,000

1 - Max Altergott, Germany, €1,746,400
2 - Jason Mercier, USA, Team PokerStars Pro, €1,115,700
3 - Sorel Mizzi, Canada, €679,100
4 - Timothy Adams, Canada, €485,100
5 - Vladimir Troyanovsky, Russia, €339,500
6 - Scott Seiver, USA, €266,900
7 - Mike Watson, Canada, €218,300

Stephen Bartley is a PokerStars Blog reporter.

The young German has been on an incredible tear over the last nine months or so and today's results moves him through the $3 million in live winnings mark. Prolific would be the word. What's more, we picked out Schemion as one to watch before he starting burning the live circuit up. Ain't no thang. a

Click through to live coverage of the PokerStars and Monte-Carlo®Casino European Poker Tour Grand Final. Check out all the festival results and write-ups here. Follow the @PokerStarsBlog Twitter account to keep up-to-date with all the EPT action.

Rick Dacey is a staff writer for the PokerStars Blog.

Thankfully, there are some people in high places who notice and judge the qualities apparent in television production. In the UK they go by the collective name of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (Bafta), and every year they celebrate the best of the best in a prestigious awards ceremony.

Last week in London, eight of the crew who work for Sunset+Vine, and have also worked on EPT coverage for ten years, latterly for Tours Productions, won a Bafta for their work at the 2012 London Paralympic Games, which was broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK. It was no mean feat. Sunset+Vine was up against nominees that included coverage of the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, the so-called "Super Saturday" of the Games when Team GB won a raft of gold medals, and also the BBC's coverage of men's tennis final at Wimbledon.

"It's the pinnacle of what we do," said the director Daniel Hudson, talking to PokerStars Blog during a break in the Super High Roller coverage here. Hudson had allowed himself a moment's respite from the heat and tension of the "truck", where live images are cut and broadcast for EPT Live and subsequently become the full edited programmes on television and PokerStars.tv.

Hudson added: "People who work in sport TV spend hours and hours away from their families, you commit a lot of your life to it, and to be recognised is just a really lovely thing. There aren't many levels of recognition within what we do, and the Bafta is the top."

The Paralympics was also no ordinary production. Olympic fever swept through Britain last summer as the better known Olympic Games seized the imagination like no other sporting event in living memory. Many feared that the Paralympics, in the same venue in the week after the Olympic fortnight, could not be anything but an anti-climax. After Usain Bolt, Mo Farah, Bradley Wiggins and Jessica Ennis, what could possibly measure up?

This is where television can step in and ensure events get the billing and the coverage they demand and deserve.

"Essentially our role was bringing the Games to the people and explaining it in a different way," Hudson said. "We personalised it for people, making people aware of the characters within each sport...We did two years of build up programmes really, where we got to know the faces as well. They were characters and athletes that we didn't know, and disabilities that we were unaware of as well. Somebody with cerebral palsy, for example, their sport works in a very different way to, say, somebody with an amputation. We had to learn all those things as well.

"Even more importantly we had to learn how people with those disabilities wanted to be treated and talked about and dealt with. It was a real learning curve for us involved."

Jo Hodges is a camera operator on the EPT, usually responsible for swooping in from the rail with a hand-held camera to bring pictures from the very nerve-centre of the poker action. She is the one who picks out the beating pulses on the side of players' necks, or eavesdrops on the anxious conversations between families and friends. But during the Paralympics, where Hodges worked in the Bafta-winning crew as a studio camera supervisor, her innate curiosity and eye for the best shot combined with an evident passion for the Games themselves and a desire to tell a different, dramatic narrative.

"It was a privilege to work on it," Hodges said, during an interview only interrupted by the necessity to watch Phil Ivey all in, doubling up. "We were just as excited as anybody else about the events that were going on...It was something new. It was trying to change people's perceptions about things and I think it succeeded in that. I think that was due to everybody, however small or large their part in it. It was about everybody working towards that one goal."

Hudson echoed the sentiment, highlighting the fact that the Bafta was awarded specifically to the whole production team, rather than specific individuals. He listed the names of each of the crew who missed the ceremony in London last week to work here around the poker tables of Monaco. Alongside Hudson and Hodges, Donna Tait, Lee Marriot, Liz Bell, Michael Burns, Dave Corfield and Liam MacLeod were also forced to forgo champagne and canapes for three-bets and bust outs.

"We've got a job to do here," Hudson said, a level of commitment and professionalism that is greatly appreciated by others involved in the presentation of this tour.

"I'm really proud and feel very privileged to have such talented people work on the EPT TV production team," said Louise-Ann Penrose, Head of Tours Productions, EPT TV & Webcast.

After a career that began on little known cable and satellite channels, cutting his teeth on some "really bad game-shows", Hudson now finds himself visiting the most exclusive destinations in world sport and directing coverage of the very biggest events. He has directed two finals of the Uefa Champion's League, watched by billions, and is now an old hand on the EPT.

"People think that poker is the easiest sport to do," Hudson said. "But actually eight people sitting around a table, not really knowing when they're going to talk -- you want to get all that reaction, when they're going to act and how they're going to act -- that's the difficult bit."

He added: "Football and rugby and ball sports, you've got one ball to follow. And as long as you're concentrating on that, you're pretty much telling the story. Well, around a poker table, the story could be just someone chipping a sentence in from one side of the table to another...You've sort of got to have eyes everywhere. That's the important bit, conveying the relationships that happen around the table all the time. It isn't just about the cards."

The same was very much true at the Paralympics, where there was a background story so much more profound than the raw statistics of world records and medal tables. Through five shows a day, every day, the Sunset+Vine crew managed to bring the Paralympics right up to the standard expected of the very biggest sporting occasions in the world.

"We genuinely broke down boundaries," Hudson said."When we walked away, we really felt that we'd made a difference. We don't get that chance very often. That's what television should be about."

Watch the latest from Monaco on EPT Live, home of the Bafta winners.

EPT9 Grand Final, event #46
Date: 14 May, 2013
Buy-in: €330
Game: NL Crazy Pineapple
Players: 30
Prize pool: €8,730

1. Ekaterina Samborskaya, Russia, €3,490
2. Olivier Gilbert Dominique Contoux, France, €2,360
3. Florian Ribouchon, France, €1,310
4. Casey Kastle, Slovenia, €870
5. David Yan, New Zealand, €700

Click through to live coverage of the PokerStars and Monte-Carlo®Casino European Poker Tour Grand Final. Check out all the festival results and write-ups here. Follow the @PokerStarsBlog Twitter account to keep up-to-date with all the EPT action.

Rick Dacey is a staff writer for the PokerStars Blog.

And some handy info from EPT Media Coordinator Mad Harper: "This is his fifth tournament win in the last seven months - and his second in a week. Last Friday he beat a 33-strong field to take down the €5k PLO event. Now he's added another €11,700 to his Monaco haul. There were 30 entries creating a €29,100 prize pool.
In September, Schemion won the Partouche final for €1,172,850, in November the Master Classics for €286,200 and the Lebanese Poker Tour only a month ago for $201,206. He won the €1k NL side events in Berlin two years running and bubbled the EPT Barcelona final table in August, finishing ninth for €55,100."

EPT9 Grand Final, event #45
Date: 14 May, 2013
Buy-in: €1,100
Game: NLHE 'Win the button'
Players: 30
Prize pool: €29,100

1. Ole Schemion, Germany, €11,700
2. Ahmad Ismail, France, €7,800
3. Sergey Tikhonov, Russia, €4,400
4. Konstantin Puchkov, Russia, €2,900
5. Asker Aloev, Russia, €2,300

Click through to live coverage of the PokerStars and Monte-Carlo®Casino European Poker Tour Grand Final. Check out all the festival results and write-ups here. Follow the @PokerStarsBlog Twitter account to keep up-to-date with all the EPT action.

Rick Dacey is a staff writer for the PokerStars Blog.

The effect is noticeable even before you are arrive. Juan Manuel Pastor, Jason Mercier and Nacho Barbero lean backwards against a wall in an awkward pose, their image anyway, on a branded hoarding tipped over against a wall, where one person, rather than several hundred, smokes a cigarette.

Inside the cash game players wring the last of the action out of the week while the tournament room sags with the absence of the bluster that previously held it up. Only eight tables are in service, three of them used by people playing online. Another is used by the camera men on a break, waiting for two more exit interviews before they can finally clock off, between the wreckage of half-empty water bottles and half-eaten paninis.

The Monte Carlo Bay Hotel

All of this will be taken apart in a few hours and shipped off for hibernation in a warehouse in the south of England - all the tables, chips, equipment that has become part of the scenery over the past nine days.

Those who have worked the tour for the whole season have also become part of the scenery. In a few hours they too will pack up and go through the familiar routine of packing their bags, swiping everything that isn't nailed down with a price tag from their hotel rooms, and heading for the airport and a flight back to civilian life.

Sorel Mizzi (left) and Jason Mercier

Three players remain in the Super High Roller, the last three of the season, to whom the EPT Grand Final is still alive and full of expectation. They and the €10,000 Turbo players, an event that is laid on to give the friends of the super high rollers something to do while they wait for Jason Mercier, Sorel Mizzi and Alex Altergott to get it all over with.

Someone has propped Barbero, Mercier and Pastor upright again. We're hours away from the end of the season. They'll serve as the rear-guard while the rest of us get ready to pack up for another year.

Stephen Bartley is a PokerStars Blog reporter.

Click through to live coverage of the PokerStars and Monte-Carlo® Casino EPT Super High Roller event. Follow the @PokerStarsBlog Twitter account to keep up-to-date with all the EPT action.

EPT9 Grand Final, event #43
Date: 14 May, 2013
Buy-in: €1,100
Game: NLHE
Players: 40
Prize pool: €38,800

1. Joachim Haraldstad, Norway, €12,700
2. Yves Kupfermunz, Belgium, €11,000
3. Xavier Detournel, France, €5,400
4. Michael Friedrich, Switzerland, €3,900
5. Murad Mirza, Azerbaijan, €3,100
6. Andrey Gulyy, Russian Federation, €2,700

Click through to live coverage of the PokerStars and Monte-Carlo®Casino European Poker Tour Grand Final. Check out all the festival results and write-ups here. Follow the @PokerStarsBlog Twitter account to keep up-to-date with all the EPT action.

Rick Dacey is a staff writer for the PokerStars Blog.

EPT9 Grand Final, event #42
Date: 13 May, 2013
Buy-in: €220
Game: NL Omaha 8 or better
Players: 15
Prize pool: €2,910

1. Paolo Mangeruca, Italy, €1,460
2. Oscar Dharmshi, UK, €870
3. Igor Bacic, Croatia, €580

Click through to live coverage of the PokerStars and Monte-Carlo®Casino European Poker Tour Grand Final. Check out all the festival results and write-ups here. Follow the @PokerStarsBlog Twitter account to keep up-to-date with all the EPT action.

Rick Dacey is a staff writer for the PokerStars Blog.

EPT9 Grand Final, event #41
Date: 13 May, 2013
Buy-in: €330
Game: NLHE turbo
Players: 56
Prize pool: €16,296

1. Patrick Van Den Dries, Belgium, €5,870
2. Carlos Bertolino, Sweden, €3,750
3. Vallo Maidla, Estonia, €2,280
4. Alejandro De Arruabarrena, Argentina, €1,630
5. Evgeny Ivanov, Russia, €1,140
6. Isabel Baltazar, France, €890
7. Cecile Ticherfatine, France, €736

Click through to live coverage of the PokerStars and Monte-Carlo®Casino European Poker Tour Grand Final. Check out all the festival results and write-ups here. Follow the @PokerStarsBlog Twitter account to keep up-to-date with all the EPT action.

Rick Dacey is a staff writer for the PokerStars Blog.

EPT9 Grand Final, event #39
Date: 13 May, 2013
Buy-in: €1,100
Game: H.O.R.S.E.
Players: 13
Prize pool: €12,610

1. Alexander Dovzhenko, Russia, €5,040*
2. Tobias Hausen, Germany, €5,040*
3. Ismael Bojang, Austria, €2,530

*relates to a heads-up deal.

Click through to live coverage of the PokerStars and Monte-Carlo®Casino European Poker Tour Grand Final. Check out all the festival results and write-ups here. Follow the @PokerStarsBlog Twitter account to keep up-to-date with all the EPT action.

Rick Dacey is a staff writer for the PokerStars Blog.

One man watches intently, leaning on the rail and gripping it with both hands. He's well-tanned, thin and, unusually for a man of his years, wears a two piece white and sky blue Adidas tracksuit with matching Adidas shoes - all day he dreams about super high rollers. He also has a moustache, certainly the only one in the Salle des Etoiles right now.

Further along a woman in jeans leans on the rail, holding her purse, standing directly behind where Jason Mercier sits. She stands watching for some time before she notices a roving camera over her right shoulder, which prompts her to move along a little. Coming the other way is Sarah Grant and her giant Lithuanian cameraman Mantyvas, and the woman is forced to shuffle back again.

All this means she almost misses the departure of Mike Watson in seventh place.
Watson, watched by someone on the rail who looked a lot like him, shoved, with the action getting back to Sorel Mizzi in the big blind, who asked Matt Altergott (who had opened) for a count before shoving himself with aces. It was a subtle ploy from Mizzi, which may have given Watson a glimmer of hope with his king-queen. His face when he saw the brick wall he was up against spoke of devastation.

The final table stage

Watson made his way to the pay-out desk, followed by the man who looks a lot like him. Card caller Shawn Lytle asked for a big round of applause and the six of us did the best we could to give him a send-off. Disappointed at having won only €218,300, Watson decided to spend €10,000 of it by immediately joining the €10,000 Turbo taking place off stage.

That reduced the crowd to five until a few others ambled up - Tony Gregg, Dan Smith, Andrew Lichtenberger and Isaac Haxton, on a break from the Turbo, checking in on their friends on stage. A super high roller crowd after all.

Stephen Bartley is a PokerStars Blog reporter.

Click through to live coverage of the PokerStars and Monte-Carlo® Casino EPT Super High Roller event. Follow the @PokerStarsBlog Twitter account to keep up-to-date with all the EPT action.

One of them is the €10,000 six-handed turbo event that started today in the cavernous Salle des Etoiles. You are already in a niche group if you can afford €10,000 to play a turbo, and that goes double if you can afford €10,000 to play a turbo on the last day of a poker festival in Monaco, where it costs a huge chunk just to stay here for one night.

It means that the 17 players so far registered really are the cream of the crop. They are mostly players who have already busted from the Super High Roller event, who got their hotel stay paid for by virtue of their entry into that €100,000 tournament. Another €10,000 to these guys is really not very much at all, and most of them are really good friends. There's a rare camaraderie among them and there's a really excellent atmosphere in the room today, even if it is practically empty.

Just to run through those tables, on one sits Fabian Quoss, Tom Marchese, Daniel Stern and Justin Bonomo. Alongside them are Andrew Chen, Tony Gregg, Mike McDonald, Thomas Wahlroos and Dan Smith. Then there's Senh Ung, Isaac Haxton, Andrew Lichetenberger, Jonathan Duhamel, Paul Newey and Mike Watson. The latter busted from the final table of the Super High Roller and hopped straight in.

Arguably this is a more difficult line up even than the event Watson just left. There really aren't any weak spots, and the format is going to suit the hyper aggression of all those guys. Our focus of course will still be on the Super High Roller -- read hand-by-hand updates, and watch on EPT Live -- but also stand by for a report from this friendly little €10K.

All the other side event reports also make for some tremendous reading.

In April 2008, when he was still "21-year-old PokerStars Qualifier Jason Mercier", rather than Team PokerStars Pro Jason Mercier (and all round tournament sensation), he won the EPT Sanremo title in a final table that is still the quickest in the tour's history.

He beat Dario Minieri, Antony Lellouche, Dag Palovic, William Thorson and others in a little more than four hours to put €869,000 in his bankroll and start the most sensational modern poker story. If he does the same today in the €100,000 Super High Roller event at the PokerStars and Monte-Carlo® Casino European Poker Tour Grand Final in Monaco -- and it is very possible -- he will endear himself even more to those weary hacks.

Of course, he will also bank yet another €1,746,400 and another massive tournament title, but it's the love of the media room he craves more than anything. I think.

This is day three of the €100,000 event, the final major event of EPT season nine. Mercier led at the end of the first day and he led at the end of the second. He is now the monstrous chip leader as we start the final table, which lines up as follows:

Jason Mercier - 4,165,000
Vladimir Troyanovsky - 2,150,000
Sorel Mizzi - 2,140,000
Max Altergott - 2,110,000
Timothy Adams - 830,000
Scott Seiver - 625,000
Mike Watson - 480,000

We will be resuming in level 17, with blinds of 20,000-40,000 (5,000 ante) and that means that Watson has only 12 big blinds, Seiver has fewer than 16 and Adams has about 21. They are the reasons this could go very quickly indeed, especially when you look at Mercier, with 104 big blinds.

He raised every hand during the period before the bubble and one suspects he will start in similar fashion. He only has six others to beat today -- and that record in Sanremo. Can he do it?

Play has actually begun in Monaco -- at 1pm -- but we are reporting on a one-hour delay so that there are no spoilers for EPT Live, which is broadcasting from 2pm, with hole cards. Our hand-by-hand coverage, plus feature pieces, are on the .