EPT Monte Carlo - 2nd Place - €1,061,820.00

First off, I'd like to apologize for the delay in posting an update. I was extremely busy in the week that I returned from Monte Carlo, and I was also still very upset over the final hand. I feel a little better now, but I don't know if I will ever forget about that last hand. As most of you have heard, I finished in 2nd place, for my biggest payday ever, a little over $1.6 million CAD.

For the first time out of 4 final tables, I actually went in as one of the chip leaders. I had $1.7m and I was in 2nd place only to Gavin Griffin, who went into the final table with $2.4m. I won't go through every hand, because it would be too much to write, and I want to leave some surprise since most of the hands will be shown on TV when they broadcast it. I will say that it was some of the best poker I have ever played in my life. Every time I made a big bet and my opponent folded, I was bluffing, and every time I made a big bet and my opponent called, I had the winning hand. I built my stack and took over the chip lead early on and kept it until Gavin and I were heads-up. That is when I made my only mistake at the final table.

I wouldn't necessarily call it a mistake, but it was a bad read. It was basically a 50/50 possibility that he had the hand, and he did. The blinds were 25k/50k, and I had a slight chip lead over Gavin, 5.5m to 5m. Gavin made it 125k to go from the button, and I called 75k more from the big blind with 55. the flop was JJ6 with 2 clubs. I checked, and Gavin bet 200k. He would be doing this with any 2 cards, so I called to see what he would do on the turn. The turn was an offsuit Ace. I checked, and Gavin bet 500k. This was the perfect bluff card for Gavin, and I have a really good feel for how he was playing, and he would have certainly checked an Ace behind here, in case I had a Jack. I called the 500k. The river was an offsuit 8. I checked, and Gavin bet 800k. This meant one thing, Gavin had to either have a Jack or better, or nothing. I also gave him the possibility of having a big drawing hand that missed, like KcQc, KcTc, or QcTc. After much deliberation, I called and unfortunately Gavin showed me J4 offsuit. One of my friends later asked me, "Marc, you must have had the Ace there, right?". I said, "It didn't matter if I had AK or 55 at that point. With the way he played the hand, he could only have a Jack, or nothing."

After that, it felt like Gavin was hitting every flop, and I was bleeding chips to him. There was one big hand where I almost called his big river bet down with King high on a 88554 board. I ended up folding and deciding I had made enough hero calls for one day. I'm interested to see what he had there. Even though I was losing a lot of small pots, I kept winning the big ones to get back to even. Every time I made a big river bet, I would stare Gavin down to make it look like I was trying to intimidate him and make him fold, like a lot of amateurs do. It worked like a charm all 3 times, and he paid me off. If he had picked up on that and started to fold, then I would have started to stare at him when I was bluffing. There's many little things like that you can do to throw off your opponents.

I was raising almost every hand, and controlling the action. I could see Gavin was getting frustrated, every time he limped his button, I would raise him from the small blind, and he would annoyingly throw in the extra 100k. I knew something big was going to happen soon. Then came the final hand. Gavin had 5.5m and I had 5m. Gavin raised to 125k on his button, and I re-raised it to 400k with 74, like I had been doing fairly often. Gavin called. The flop came 234, a pretty good flop for my hand. I decided to bet 500k, and Gavin thought for a little while, before announcing 2 million. As soon as he did that, I knew he did not want action. But now came the tough decision, what do I do here? I gave Gavin two possibilities, either a drawing hand with a 5, or a complete bluff. I said to myself, well I can flat call the 2 million, and then push a safe turn, but what is a safe turn? Almost every card in the deck other than a 4 or a 7 is a potential scare card. He could be bluffing with QJ, and if the turn is a Q, I'm done. Also, another thing came to my mind. Even though Gavin almost committed himself if he has a draw, maybe he will be too embarrassed to call his whole tournament with a hand like K5. I knew he would not be raising here with a made hand, because he would have trapped me in position, with how aggressive I was playing. This took about 5-10 seconds of thought, and then I announced, "All in". Gavin looked sick. We counted out the chips, and if Gavin called and lost, he would only have 500k left to my 10 million. He reluctantly said, "I call", and for a second I was shocked that he actually called, and I exclaimed, "Oh sh*t, you call?". He said, "yeah, but you have the best hand." I tabled the 74, and he showed K5. This was it. The dealer slowly dealt the turn card, and it was a 3. Beautiful! One card left, one card until the $2.8 million first prize and the EPT Championship was pretty much in my hands... the river card... the King of hearts.

Just like that, it was all over. I was crushed. 5 days of poker, over 60 hours of play, and it all ended so cruelly. I guess some good can come out of this. After that river card cost me $1.2 million, I guess no river will ever hurt as much again! Now that I look back at, I still came in 2nd place, and how can I complain? If somebody had told me I would finish in 2nd place on Day 1, I would have said, "Yeah, I wish!". I'm grateful for the success I've had, it's just that when you are standing there with the championship on the tip of your fingers, losing is the most painful thing in the world.

I want to thank everyone for all of the support I have received. It has really been overwhelming, and even though I couldn't respond to most of it, I really appreciate it. All of the comments here on my blog, on JackSeven, on Facebook, and to my e-mail. Last but not least, I'd like to thank my sponsor, Eurolinx Poker, for everything they have done. They might not be the biggest poker room on the internet, but their customer service and generosity are second to none.

As for my next tournament, I believe I will be playing in the $25,000 WPT Championship on April 21st at the Bellagio. The tournament starts in 5 days, so I'd better make my mind up quickly!