Jason Mercier Continues To Climb the Poker Ranks $15.6 Million In Lifetime Winnings and Another Run at Player of the Year

Jason Mercier’s down-to-earth, easygoing demeanor belies just how much of a dominant force he has been at the poker table over the past decade. His every man appearance and his soft-spoken manner hold him back from becoming the larger-than-life personality that defined the game’s biggest stars during the boom of the early 2000’s.

The 28-year-old Florida native doesn’t have the outsize joviality of Daniel Negreanu or the terrifying table presence of Phil Ivey. What he does have is more than $15.6 million in lifetime live tournament earnings. What he has is three World Series of Poker gold bracelets and a European Poker Tour main event title. He has one of the most consistent resumes on the tournament circuit, finishing inside the top 200 in the Card Player Player of the Year race every year since 2011, making the top 20 twice. And that is just his live tournament success. He also plays online tournaments and high stakes cash games, both on the Internet and in brick and mortar casinos.

Chasing Titles

So far in 2015, it’s been more of the same for Mercier. Heading into the busy fall season, he has already made seven total final tables, winning his third WSOP gold bracelet in the prestigious $5,000 no-limit hold’em six-max event for $633,357 and then taking down a huge $25,000 buy-in high roller event at the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open for $517,187. He sits in the top five in the Player of the Year standings, within striking distance of his first POY title. Card Player caught up with Mercier while he played the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) from Aruba to learn more about his impressive showing so far in 2015.

Erik Fast: You’ve had a really big year so far on the live tournament circuit and are pretty close to the top of the rankings in the 2015 Player of the Year race. The last time Card Player interviewed you at the 2014 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, you expressed some frustration with a dry spell as far as titles go, but since then, you’ve been able to get back to your winning ways. It must feel good to get some marquee wins under your belt again.

Jason Mercier: It’s been nice to be able to just win tournaments. Last year I won only one event, the World Poker Tour Alpha 8 St. Kitts, which was in December. That was good, but it was only a 15-player field. It feels good to win a tournament at the World Series of Poker again, to get a bracelet and a lot of money. The runner-up finish there was great too, but winning the $25,0000 high roller in my hometown was really awesome. It was one of the bigger high roller events ever held in Florida, so even just making the final table was cool, but winning was the cherry on top.

EF: So you really got your 2015 tournament run going with an impressive showing in the PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP). You won three tournaments in the span of a week for over a quarter of a million dollars. Where does playing online poker fit in as a part of your life as a professional?

JM: I almost always plan to play at least part of the two big online tournament series, the SCOOP and WCOOP. Because I ended up winning Player of the Series in the spring, I decided to play the entirety of the WCOOP this fall. As far as playing online, I pretty much limit my tournament play to those two series. When I am able to play online while traveling, in places like Monte Carlo or Malta or anywhere that they allow PokerStars then I will play cash games like eight-game mix.

EF: How much of your career early on was based around playing online? For many of today’s top players it’s where the got their start and they only transitioned to primarily live players out of necessity. Where did online poker factor in the growth of your career?

JM: Playing online was pretty much everything for me in the beginning. I started in both tournaments in cash looking to find how I could make the most money. For two years I was balancing going to school, working a job and trying to play poker. It wasn’t until PokerStars announced the addition of the Supernova Elite program to their VIP program heading into 2007. That year, I decided to try to achieve that reward ranking, which required me to essentially play 45 hours a week for basically the whole year. I was just playing cash to do that, and when I reached Supernova Elite, that awarded me European Poker Tour live tournament packages. I had free entries into the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure and one for the EPT Monte Carlo. I satellited into the San Remo event on PokerStars because that was going to be the week before Monte Carlo, and I ended up getting my first big win for over a million dollars. After that, I just started traveling to events and playing live and never really looked back. From there on, I didn’t consider myself an online poker player, it was just part of what I did as an all-around player.

Show Me The Money

In the time since Mercier took down EPT San Remo in 2007, he has put together an incredible resume, with more than $15.6 million in live tournament cashes. That puts him 11th place on the all-time money list for live poker tournaments, ahead of legends of the game such as Michael Mizrachi (13th – $14,432,072), Scotty Nguyen (16th – $11,956,190), and Carlos Mortensen (19th – $11,825,124).

A lot of things have changed in the years since that those players became household names. When Nguyen won the WSOP main event in 1998, the $10,000 buy-in was one of the largest that year. In 2015, there have been multiple $100,000 buy-in events and even a $500,000 buy-in. With small-field events paying out some of the biggest scores of the year, the landscape has changed. We talked to Mercier about his spot on the list and how high rollers are affecting the standings and the tournament scene.

EF: So the all-time money list and its value as a measure of success has been changed a lot in recent years with the proliferation of super high roller events, but still it’s quite an accomplishment to be knocking on the door of the top ten.

JM: It’s definitely cool to be up there on the list. It’s something that I’d like to be at the very top of, but of course, I’m going to need to cash a tournament that has a buy-in of more than $100,000 if I want to gain some ground on the guys who have won the $1 million buy-in One Drop event. It’s something I definitely check in on once in a while. I hope I keep climbing.

EF: You have played in your fair share of six-figure buy-in events, with six cashes in $100,000 events and two titles. What are your thoughts on the Super High Roller scene, which began to expand just before Black Friday and has continued to grow and evolve despite the hit that the overall tournament poker economy has taken?

JM: I really enjoy these tournaments. For one, I like to play for a lot of money. I also like to play against the best players in the world and challenge myself. There really is a lot of value in these events because of the rich businessmen that play the events and also sometimes you find value from tournaments players who are taking a shot at a high roller and are less experienced with this type of event and these stakes. I pretty much plan my travel schedule around high rollers. I usually won’t go to a festival if it doesn’t have at least a $25,000 buy-in or higher.

As far as the sustainability of these Super High Roller events, I mean, they just keep growing. They are a nice draw for the businessmen who can’t commit to playing a main event for six or seven days, but these high rollers give them the opportunity to play for a big payday and have the event done in three days or often even fewer. As long as there is a market for them I think they will continue to run.

EF: You mentioned you prefer to play for more money. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but from an outsider’s perspective you don’t seem like the kind of guy who wants to buy a Bentley and be a ‘baller.’ If that is accurate, what does money mean to you? Is it merely a means of keeping score in poker?

JM: It’s mostly about setting myself up financially for my future and trying to build my net worth. Maybe even get myself to a point where I don’t really need poker. If I actually were to stop, I’d be fine and not have to keep coming back to the game for a source of income.

Home Sweet Florida and Looking Forward

Florida is Mercier’s home base, and you don’t have to read an article like this or check his Wikipedia page to know that. Most every time you see him in a poker room, he is sporting Dolphins, Heat, or other Florida sports teams’ gear.

Before a few years ago, it was hard to be a poker professional and live in Florida, with outdated laws limiting the growth of the scene there. The Florida House voted to expand gambling in the state in 2010. Since then, it has been one of the fastest-growing poker markets in the world. We talked to Mercier about his thoughts on his home base and how it has changed, his goals for the coming years and more.

EF: As someone who identifies with your home state so much, is it exciting to have had the poker scene grow so immensely there?

JM: Florida poker has been a big draw, with people moving from all over, and even from Las Vegas. There are a lot of poker rooms there that have a lot of good live games, $2-$5 and $5-$10 games that players can make a living off of. There are a lot of good players that now call Florida their home. It’s pretty cool that I didn’t have to move there because I already lived there. It was also very cool to win the $25,000 tournament here because my parents got to come and it was the first time they were able to see me win a tournament. It was amazing to have them, my sister, and a bunch of friends there to see that. Now that there are so many more big tournaments in Florida, its nice to have that as an option.

EF: Looking forward, are there any goals you’re hoping to achieve in your poker career?

JM: No, not really. I’m just taking it one trip at a time. I don’t really have any big goals, I just want to win money and continue to do well. I used to say that I want to win a World Poker Tour main event, because I won a European Poker Tour my first year on the live circuit and a World Series of Poker bracelet the next summer. So people would be like, “When are you going to get the Triple Crown?” So I used to list that as a goal when people asked me about it, but it’s kind of silly to set that as a goal when I only play three or four of them a year.

EF: Poker is a unique lifestyle. People who aren’t accustomed to what it’s like as a poker professional have a hard time wrapping their mind around what it would be like to go in to ‘work’ and do you job well and lose a lot of money that day. How do you keep things in perspective and how do you balance things outside of the game?

JM: Right now, I’ve actually been playing a ton of poker for a long stretch since the spring, so I haven’t actually had that balance of working out a lot and doing other activities outside of the game. It’s always a constant struggle for me to maintain balance, but I do have a girlfriend now. She is a professional poker player as well and has been traveling with me recently. That’s been really nice, especially because she understands the lifestyle and gets that I won’t exactly be in a great mood after I lose six figures. It’s nice and definitely helps that she’s there for me and gets it. ♠