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The PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker has always been home to a large number of well known poker players. This year, WCOOP was the feeding ground for many of these poker professionals – most notably this year’s winner, Jason Mercier. Mercier battled his way through all of the competition WCOOP had to offer and ended up the winner, taking home a total prize package of around $435,000 in the $1k NL Texas Holdem tournament.

More than 3,000 poker players turned out to compete in this year’s World Championship of Online Poker to compete for their piece of a $3 million prize pool – much more money than the tournament guaranteed. During the final phase of the tournament, Mercier took part in a 3 person battle with an additional prize package being offered to both the winner and 2nd place finisher, $60k and $15k, respectively.

Fighting back against Mercier at the final table of WCOOP were two well known poker professionals including Mercier’s PokerStars teammate Chad Brown and the Doyles Room team professional Dani Stern. Unfortunately, both of these big names were the early eliminations from the last table of the tournament.

The last three remaining players in the tournament were Mercier, of course, along with two solid online players – looser17 and osten. Osten tried to bluff out Mercier on the final hand with only the top pair on the table. Unfortunately for osten, Mercier had three of a kind all the way and vanquished the online poker pro after three flop bets and a check raise all in.

Mercier’s win in event #42 of the online tournament marked the first time that he has been very successful in an online setting – despite his various money finishes in live poker events. Last year, Mercier finished big with live events – capping his success with a World Series of Poker bracelet grab in the $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha event of the tournament.