The Nightly Turbo: Mercier Falls Short of Lindgren's Record, PokerStars TCOOP Schedule

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Dec 18, 2012 6 min read

Miss the day's biggest poker stories? You've come to the right place. In this edition of the Nightly Turbo, we're cover Jason Mercier's run at a poker record held by Erick Lindgren, the schedule for PokerStars' Turbo Championship of Online Poker, and more.

In Case You Missed It:

The battle for 2012 Player of the Year came down to the wire between Dan Smith and Marvin Rettenmaier. Rich Ryan takes a look at that topic and more in his latest Five Thoughts piece.

A winner was crowned at the World Series of Poker Circuit Rincon Main Event on Monday. Get a full final table recap here at PokerNews.com.

Chris Klodnicki won the 2012 Sands Bethlehem DeepStack Extravaganza Main Event after a bizarre ending to the tournament. Find out what happened in our final table recap.

The European Poker Tour Prague wrapped up last week. Chad Holloway takes a look at the winners from some of the side events.

Gareth Chantler is an experienced poker player and an instructor at CardRunners.com. In his latest video here at PokerNews, Chantler discusses live cash-game hands with the help of a poker calculator.

Mercier's Streak Ends

Despite cashing for more than $523,000 on the live tournament circuit in 2012, it's been a relatively disappointing year for Team PokerStars Pro Jason Mercier. The man who coined the #whenwillitend Twitter hashtag to signify his seemingly endless heater, Mercier finally cooled off this year. For the first time in five years, he will not eclipse the million-dollar mark in tournament winnings.

As pointed out by our Donnie Peters a year ago, Mercier was chasing a prestigious record in 2012. Only Erick Lindgren had accrued $1 million-plus in tournament cashes five consecutive years (2004-2008). Lindgren's winnings over that time eclipsed $6.2 million, but he hasn't had a $1 million year since then. Lindgren has been mostly absent at the tables since being outed for failing to repay outstanding bets and loans to members of the poker community.

Mercier had averaged more than $1.8 million in cashes during his own four-year run, but #itended during a drought-filled 2012. Mercier's last try at the seven-figure mark came at the Prague Poker Festival last week. He first made a deep run in the World Poker Tour Prague Main Event but was eliminated in 12th place for $30,420 (first place was $413,666). He then took seventh in the European Poker Tour Prague High Roller for $57,773 (first was $477,479).

Lindgren's record is safe for now, but don't be surprised if you see Mercier making another run at it in 2017.

For the Turbo Grinders

The schedule for PokerStars' second annual Turbo Championship of Online Poker (TCOOP) was announced on Tuesday. The series will run from Jan. 17 through 27, 2013, offering a guarantee prize pool of $15 million — $5 million more than 2012’s inaugural series. The TCOOP was introduced in January 2012 as a fast-action alternative to PokerStars' two other online series, the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) and the Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP).

TCOOP will have 50 events spread over 11 days with buy-ins ranging from $7.50 all the way up to the $2,100 High Roller event. The Main Event will be a $700 NL Hold’em affair on Jan. 27, featuring a guaranteed prize pool of $2 million and a minimum $300,000 for first place. In addition, the winner of the 2013 TCOOP Player of the Series will be awarded a 2014 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure package.

“TCOOP is a great series that offers something for everyone – regardless of the game or buy-in you’re looking for – all in a fast-paced format," said Team PokerStars Online's Mickey "mement_mori" Petersen. "Turbos are great because they combine just the right mix of skill and calculated gambling, and you can win a title in just a few hours! I'm especially looking forward to the Main Event and the High Roller on the final Sunday.”

This year’s series will hold a variety of games including, no-limit hold’em, pot limit Omaha, no limit Omaha hi/lo, no-limit draw, triple stud, HORSE, 8-game, razz, and more. In addition to the wide array of game selection, an assortment of formats will be offered as well, including knockouts, hyper-turbos, shootouts, heads-up, four-max, six-max, big antes, 2x chance, and rebuys.

Poker pro David "betudontbet" Emmons seized the Main Event title in last year’s series to win $382,856. Emmons took on Chris "ImDaNuts" Oliver, another successful online pro, heads-up to win it all. The TCOOP Leaderboard winner was Scott "Mongy" O’Reily, who played all 50 events and cashed in 14 of them. That was enough to receive Player of the Series trophy and a SCOOP Main Event High ticket worth $10,300.

Online satellites for TCOOP are currently running on PokerStars.com. Visit PokerStars.com for more information, including the full TCOOP tournament schedule.

PokerStars' New Online Pro

Russian poker pro Tatiana "Mysters_Y" Barausova is the newest member of Team PokerStars Online, the site announced on Tuesday. Relatively unknown on the live circuit, Barausova cut her teeth online years ago by grinding up from micro-stakes cash games to medium-stake games in just a few months' time. She is a now a successful player at $3-$6 and plays limits as high as $25-$50.

In both 2011 and 2012, Barausova earned Supernova Elite VIP status, and intends to achieve the same for 2013 — this time while donning the famous PokerStars red spade.

In March 2012, Barausova scored final table finishes during the Sunday Majors for both the Sunday Warm-Up and the $109 Sunday Rebuy, receiving $35,787 for the two events. She told PokerStars that she is aiming to improve her tournament results now that she’s a member of online poker’s most high-profile team. She will continue to player under the screen name "Mysters_Y."

Read more about Barausova at PokerStars.com.

Lipparelli Calls For Federal Legislation

Harry Reid's efforts to legalize online poker at the federal level died during the lame-duck session last week, but web gaming supporters are still voicing the need to pass a measure before final days of the 112th Congress.

On Tuesday, an op-ed by former Nevada Gaming Control Board Chairman Mark Lipparelli was posted at RollCall.com. As chairman of the GCB, Liparelli played a crucial role in the progress of intrastate online poker in Nevada by approving a handful of operators for online gaming licenses ahead of the launch of the market.

But Lipparelli says he supports the federal online poker legislation in Washington because it would prohibit casino-style gaming on the Internet and sanction only online poker and lottery ticket sales. Thus, the health of brick-and-mortar casinos will be maintained, and lotteries would see business expand to a new customer base.

Wrote Lipparelli, "States will derive much-needed revenue from online poker — an iconic American game enjoyed by presidents and many others for centuries and one in which the outcome can be determined by shrewd play and not necessarily by the cards set down by the house."

After stepping down from his regulatory role, Lipparelli is taking his one-year "cooling off" period from the gaming industry. But he said in September that he plans to return to the private gaming sector.

Check out the full op-ed at RollCall.com.

Online Poker Traffic

Full Tilt Poker's traffic dropped 13 percent last week, marking the fourth consecutive week of double-digit declines since the November re-launch. According to PokerScout.com, FTP started with an average of 8,500 real-money cash game players the week after the re-launch, and has since dwindled to 3,850 – down 56 percent from its initial peak. Last week's drop at FTP played a part in a worldwide online poker traffic decline of 1.3 percent last week.

PartyPoker also contributed to the fall as the site saw a 4 percent dip last week following the end of its Advent Calendar promotion. However, PartyPoker got an instant jolt in traffic Tuesday when it officially merged liquidity pools with bwin. Bwin's poker site had been down for maintenance since Monday, and players were met with a notice that they will soon see all-new software and a player pool double the previous size. Following the merger with bwin, PartyPoker had more than 6,000 real-money cash game players as of Tuesday evening. Full Tilt Poker, ranked second in this week's traffic rankings, had 5,400 at that time. With Full Tilt's traffic on the decline, there could be a shift in the rankings next week.

Here's a look at the online poker traffic rankings as of Tuesday:

Check out the full report at PokerScout.com.

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